


That Sets the Heart Beating Faster

by Ellipsical



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: A lot of food and cooking in this, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst-lite, Blow Jobs, Coming In Pants, Dirty Talk, Domesticity, First Kiss, First Time, Found Family, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, Intergluteal Sex, M/M, Masturbation, Refractory times, Retirement, Rimming, Shower Sex, there is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-11-09 03:29:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 27,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11095938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellipsical/pseuds/Ellipsical
Summary: Apatura iris - The Purple Emperor"The Purple Emperor is neither the rarest, nor the largest of Britain’s resident butterflies.His elusive nature is, perhaps, part of the appeal. This is not an insect you will stumble upon, unlessyou are blessed with extraordinary luck. He must be sought out, in suitable country, and even therethe untrained eye may totally fail to spot him unless he knows how to look.And yet, this is not another humble brown retiring beast, easily confused with many similar dingyspecies, but a soaring rush of colour and spectacle – a flash of black, purple and white that sets theheart beating faster."-The Purple EmpireHarry Hart is thoroughly enjoying being dead, thank you.Retirement, at the age of 56, is another matter.That is, until Eggsy shows up.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Black Prince](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6637963) by [ColinFilth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColinFilth/pseuds/ColinFilth). 



> This work is semi-complete. It does not end on a cliff-hanger, but the arc is truncated. I will not be writing anymore. Please read the note at the end if you would like to know why. I am indebted to ColinFilth who helped me out tremendously, whose stunning prose inspired me to write this fic, and who is a wonderful person all around.

The first time Harry sees him is the day the truck arrives with his belongings from London.

The Shetland cliffs are stark and windswept and utterly empty. Harry can see in all directions, the Burra fjord abutting the cottage’s back. It’s why he chose this location. If anyone comes looking for him, he’ll be able to see them first.

He checks his surveillance feed later that night, the boxes from the mews stacked three high in the spare bedroom directly above the office where he sits; he’ll sort them later. For now he sips his three fingers of brandy and zooms in on the dark figure standing beside a black Jeep on the cliff opposite the house. The license plates have been removed and at first Harry cannot make out the man’s face for the distance and the hat pulled down low over his brow.   

He watches, over and over, as the man turns, his profile briefly revealing itself, backlit by the windshield, before he ducks behind the driver’s side door.

Harry would know that profile anywhere.

The square cut jaw, the sharp, clean line of his nose, the tight seam of his mouth. _Angry_ , Harry thinks. _Unhappy_ , he amends a moment later.

The soft sideways vee of his downcast eye, lashes dark against his pale skin. 

His eyes, Harry knows, would be sea-green muddled with blue.

An ember burning in the back of his throat, Harry's gaze traces the scar that cuts through Eggsy’s left eyebrow, and then down, over the curve of his ear.

He wonders how Eggsy found him, when not even Merlin had managed it. The various transportation companies had followed his directions to the letter. He had made sure of that, using GPS locators and CCTV and by hacking into the international shipping register’s tracking system. There should have been no cause for suspicion. Harry Hart was dead. His belongings, as dictated by his last will and testament, were sent to a warehouse in Islington where they would reside until family could collect them if they so wished. The goods had changed hands three times since they were packed up in Harry’s home, their first stop being that storage facility in Islington, not to mention the flight from Edinburgh to Brussels and then on to Bergen before finally landing on Scottish soil once more, in the Shetland Islands.

How had Eggsy traced him?

Harry leans back in his seat and swirls his glass. He can’t help feeling impressed. He had obviously heard of how the lad had almost singlehandedly saved the world after the Valentine debacle. The foil had showcased all of Eggsy’s not inconsiderable strengths: reckless courage and charismatic bravado and his innate chameleon-like ability to adapt, not to mention his skills in both hand-to-hand combat and marksmanship.

But this, _this_ was impressive spycraft. It would have required instinct and dedication and intelligence and resourcefulness. All of which Harry had seen in Eggsy from the start, but which had been poorly sketched when they first met, allowed to languish, almost vestigial.

It seems that Eggsy had not let the last year go to waste.

Harry stands up and steps over to the window that looks out over the fjord, the waters in tumult, the cobalt streaked with white waves as the sun begins to set. He can feel a headache beginning to pulse behind his left eye.

He tips the glass back, lets the brandy slip down his throat like a spill of hot silk, thinking of the first time he had seen Eggsy outside the Holborn Police Station. Vulnerable and jaded and achingly lovely, wearing insouciance as armor. He’d been unwaveringly loyal right from the start. Guilt instantly sours the alcohol in Harry’s stomach and he rests the cool crystal against his brow for a moment, rolling it along the tight throbbing skin.

There’s nothing for it; Eggsy will do what he will. Harry takes one more look at the sea, feeling resigned, feeling exhausted, and then goes to wash out the glass. He sets it on the draining board to dry. Wipes his hands on a dish towel. Goes to get ready for bed.

 

**********

 

The second time, Harry never actually _sees_ him.

Eggsy is there nonetheless.

Footprints preceding him in the sand as Harry takes his daily walk along the beach below his house.

A prickling at the back of Harry’s neck when he stands at his bathroom sink in only a towel, shaving, window open to the fog soaked morning breeze behind him.

Grass blades crushed directly beneath Harry’s second storey bedroom window. A line of small stones lined up along the sill, neat as soldiers.

A cup of coffee, steaming in the center of the kitchen island, when Harry goes downstairs the next morning. The milk still swirling in the black.

The scent of Eggsy’s aftershave, dabbed, Harry knows, beneath the velvet lobes of his ears, and patted into the soft clean-shaven pink skin of his cheeks—citrus, nutmeg, vetiver, wood—cool and light and ineluctably youthful, lingering in the air.

Harry, feeling the first heady surge of adrenaline in months, breathes it deep into his lungs, and grins.

 

**********

  

The third time, Harry is waiting for him.

It is a trifling matter to slip into the Kingsman system (Merlin had yet to change most of the passwords since Harry’s death) and keep himself apprised of Eggsy’s schedule. When there is a two week break in between assignments that are simply coded, Bangkok and Minsk, Harry begins sleeping outside.

Two days in and camped out on the headland, Harry watches Eggsy approach, cutting his headlights a few kilometers away and continuing up the dirt road slowly, picking his way in the dark, before he eventually pulls off and parks at the bottom of a small rise, effectively hiding him from the house and, so he thinks, from Harry.

Harry tracks him through his night vision binoculars, a small black figure moving amongst the shivering grasses, silvered by the full moon.

The dart meets its target with precision and Eggsy drops to the ground.


	2. Chapter Two

Eggsy sleeps for ten hours.

By the time his eyelashes flutter open, Harry is showered, shaved, breakfasted, and dressed in an impeccable Kingsman suit, blue houndstooth with a charcoal gray silk tie, sitting opposite Eggsy, who is splayed inelegantly beneath a blanket on Harry’s sofa.

Harry sips his tea with a calmness that refuses to actually settle beneath his skin, his pulse restive, blood sparking in the tips of his fingers. His ankle jimmies and, with effort, Harry stills the tell as Eggsy blinks at the unfamiliar ceiling, getting his bearings. When Harry replaces his cup in its saucer the sound trills through the room, bright and lilting, and Eggsy turns his head, a smile that would rival the sun’s own warmth breaking across his face.

Harry’s poor heart.

It flips.

“Oi,” Eggsy says, stretching his arms over his head, his rib cage expanding beneath his black hoodie, so that the blanket begins to slide off his body, revealing a patch of skin. His belly _—warm_ , Harry thinks in a tingling electric rush, _and firmsoftpale with a trail of silky brown hair besides_ _—_ as, into a blue cashmere heap on the floor, the blanket tumbles. Harry, tearing his eyes away, watches as Eggsy slowly drags himself up to sitting. “You tranq’ed me?” he murmurs wonderingly, rubbing at the, no-doubt sore, purpling bump on his neck where the dart went in the night before. Green eyes flicker up to meet Harry’s, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth, as he says, “That’s savage, Harry.”

“You were trespassing,” Harry replies, without apology, shooting his cuffs and busying his hands with picking non-existent lint from his trousers.

Affecting bored.

Eggsy’s eyebrows rise, the tips of two brown triangles, and the smile broadens. 

“Who me?” A pantomime of innocence, Eggsy shakes his head and sprawls back against the sofa cushions, his body loose, legs spread wide. Insolent, with a flush still staining his pillow-creased cheeks. His arms hook up and over the back, hands dangling. Harry notes the signet ring winking on his pinky finger, and all at once a rush of something hot and complicated floods his chest, as Eggsy says, “Nah, I was just here to say hello to an old friend.”

“Hello,” Harry says, and is gratified when it sounds like how he wills it to: _goodbye_ , and not how he means it.

“Hi,” Eggsy says, oblivious, his voice deep and rough with sleep, his expression drowsy and sweet and pleased beneath his tousled tawny hair, and Harry feels a burst of heat at the base of his neck that spreads down his spine in a slow, warm trickle.

He ignores it. Resolutely.

Tilts his head.

“Eggsy,” he says, and Eggsy perks up at that, sitting forward, elbows slung over his knees, his eyes drifting over Harry’s face with open hunger, as if he is re-memorizing details. They stall briefly, curious and light, on the scarring around Harry’s left eye and Harry clenches his teeth to stop himself from turning away. Unfazed, Eggsy’s gaze roams over Harry’s body, eager and fleet. As if just the sight of Harry is satisfying something inside him. Harry swallows against the sharp pain in his throat to see that look on the boy’s face, guileless and openly adoring. _Stop_ , Harry wants to beg, _I can see_ everything. Wants to cover him, as if Eggsy were being laid bare before Harry, shield his longing from view. Instead he says, steady and cold as he can, “I think it’s time for you to be going.”

And stands, fingers automatically reaching for the top button on his jacket, ignoring the way his fingertips tremble, as he pushes it through the hole.

Ignoring the way that the flagrant, unrepentant, _naked_ desire that Eggsy wears so easily, so comfortably, in the face of all propriety or, or, or, _rules_ , or a modicum of bloody _sense_ , how it feels like a dare.

A dare that Harry must not take.

So he doesn’t. Standing there, assuming an air that says: I am impervious to your charms, your affection, your regard. That says: I did not miss you the way you so obviously missed me. In fact I rarely thought of you at all. That says: I am complete unto myself, but thank you for your consideration. Now please, be on your way.

Ignoring, ignoring everything _else_.

Eggsy looks up at him from beneath his lashes, his pink pink mouth a moue, almost a scowl.

“No, guv, I don’t think I will.”

“I can see that your manners haven’t improved any, since I’ve been gone,” Harry snaps, tone harsh. “They’re abominable as ever.” Irritated. This was the last thing he wanted, to be discovered. And by the only person who posed any kind of threat to Harry in any real sense of the word. It seems spectacularly unfair. Why couldn’t Eggsy have just left well enough alone? Let Harry live out his years quietly, without bloodshed or risk. Harry has had enough of both to last him three lifetimes and more. Does Eggsy think that Harry hasn’t acquired quite enough regret? That breaking the heart of a boy thirty years his junior, and his own while he’s at it, is really necessary at this stage of the game? It seems cruel to make him do it twice over and resentment boils through his veins, hot and vicious, as he glares down at Eggsy.

And Eggsy, ever defiant, glares back. Crosses his arms over his chest and, deliberately, or so it feels to Harry, licks his lips.

And suddenly, like a match dropping into kindling:

_Eggsy’s tongue slick-slip-sliding against his own and the sounds Eggsy had made: sweet honeyed moans and broken desperate gasps._

_The taste: gin and vermouth, cigarettes and chewing gum._

“It’s too early for this bollocks,” Eggsy mutters, disappointed in _Harry_ , the gall of him, shoving off the sofa and turning towards the kitchen, as if he has lived there all along.

Harry stands in the middle of his sitting room and breathes.

Bristles.

Breathes.

He looks around, at the bank of windows looking out over the sea. At the shelves lining the walls filled with books he had had no time to read until now. His furniture that he had picked out over the course of decades while traveling the world with Kingsman. His 18th century Aubusson rug whose pile was still luxuriantly thick. His Tiffany lamps that scatter prismatic patterns on the walls in the evening. The shine off the wood floors, worn soft and smooth with age, they once were pews in an Italian cathedral. He had designed this house and watched it being built. It was his one true secret. That one thing he had come to rely on as his ticket out. When he was ready, he had always known there would be a place for him.

It still doesn’t feel like home. It still has that strange, impersonal, un-lived in feeling of a hotel room. Transient.

Liminal.

Harry feels suspended. Caught somewhere between the sky and the land; at sea.

His gentleman spy suit that no longer fits like the second skin it once had, nor yet the man who will inhabit the house fully. He had hoped his belongings from Kensington would help. Now he is not so sure.

And here is Eggsy, moving about in the kitchen making small humming noises in the back of his throat, causing a clatter and commotion that can only be described as a din, rifling Harry’s stock and no doubt finding it wanting, and Harry’s first instinct is to pad in there and press his lips to the back of the boy’s neck, to shoo him into a seat at the table, to make him cheese on toast and then to lick the buttery crumbs from his mouth, his fingers, from the warm rosy flush of his throat after he is done.

 _Home_.

Harry shakes his head at himself.

 _You are treading a fine line_ , he hears Merlin say in his ear from a lifetime away.  _Take care._


	3. Chapter Three

When Harry walks into the kitchen Eggsy is inside the walk-in pantry, head tipped back, looking up. His hand is wrapped around the back of his neck, tentatively massaging the bruised skin around the tranquilizer mark.

Hearing the clip of Harry’s oxfords against the tile, Eggsy turns and leans out, hands braced on the door frame. “Harry, do you have anything decent in this posh bunker? And don’t you dare tell me alls you got is some weak fucking malted milks for my tea…”

“I believe there are some digestives above the flour,” Harry suggests sweetly, going to put the Moka pot on the hob.

Eggsy pulls a face.

“You’re a travesty, Harry. You don’t even have any cereal.”

Harry considers him for a moment. Lets his eyes skate up and down. There are violet shadows beneath Eggsy’s eyes, his dark blonde hair is wildly mussed, and his body is slouched, limbs heavy. Aftereffects of the drug, Harry thinks. His own fault really. Harry sighs and nods his head towards the table. “Sit down, Eggsy. I will make you breakfast.”

Eggsy’s eyes roll up into his head before they squeeze shut in relief. “Oh, thank Christ.”

Eggsy melts down into one of the chairs and lays his cheek on his folded forearms, watching Harry move between the refrigerator and the island with bleary eyes.

“You always wear a suit to breakfast?” he teases as Harry drapes his jacket over a stool and rolls his shirtsleeves up to whisk the cream into the eggs.

“Old habits,” Harry murmurs, keeping an eye on the pat of butter sliding around the bottom of the pan to his right. The water inside the Moka pot begins to boil, rumbling in the quiet of the room.

The silence deepens, broken only by the hiss of the eggs poured into the hot pan, the crunch of the bread as Harry cuts two slices off the bagette to toast, the high whine of the wind outside the window. Eggsy’s eyes are closed, his lips softly parted. He breathes deeply, into his ribs, the arch of his back rising and falling rhythmically. Harry makes toast and fixes Eggsy’s coffee the way he likes, too much sugar and too much cream. When he sets the plate down with a thunk Eggsy blinks awake and sits up, scrubbing his palms down his face.

“Ta,” he says softly, smiling up at Harry, wide and genuine, with the skin around his eyes crinkled up, and Harry assiduously doesn’t pay attention to the way his stomach dives in response.

Harry merely nods, _ignoring_ , and goes to fetch orange juice from the fridge. He sets the pitcher down on the table and goes to get a glass from the cupboard, but when he turns around Eggsy is drinking directly from the container, eyes closed in what looks like bliss, his Adam’s apple riding up and down the center of his throat as he swallows. Harry watches the motion, the bare curve of the boy’s neck dotted with beauty marks. The steady thump of his pulse beneath his jaw. The glint of his stubble, catching the light and sparkling. Harry’s fingertips throb with a sudden rush of blood, feeling, the rough catch of the hairs, the way they would scrape and drag, the way they would make him tingle and burn everywhere they touched. Harry shivers involuntarily and turns to put the glass away.

He braces his hands for a moment, knuckles whitening around the counter’s edge, elbows locked, and stares out over the sea, getting his breath back. Clouds are gathering in the distance, thunderheads with a black sky at their backs.

He fixes himself a cup of coffee, black with a splash of cream, his tea gone cold in the other room, and settles at the table across from Eggsy.

“How did you find me?” he asks, taking a sip.

Eggsy pauses, fork raised halfway to his mouth, his other hand wrapped loosely around his mug, the skin of his palm flushed pink from the heat. “It was Mr. Pickles,” he says, before darting forward and taking the bite of eggs, chewing as he leans back in his chair.

“Mr. Pickles,” Harry repeats, nonplussed, his brow furrowing.

“Yeah,” Eggsy says, the faintest blush on his cheeks. He licks his lips, embarrassed, and Harry’s eyes are drawn there, helplessly, to the red, wet, _lush_ skin.

Eggsy is smiling when Harry meets his gaze again, the corner of one side of his mouth tugged up, the look in his eyes unbearably fond and _knowing_. A hot blush swells up Harry’s chest to burn in his throat, blood hot and metallic on his tongue, because, idiot, he’s so obvious, it’s pathetic. Harry raises his cup to his lips and takes another sip.

“And how did Mr. Pickles lead you here?”

“Well,” Eggsy says, more confident now—fuck fuck fuck, bugger all, Harry is an old fool—lounging in his seat, relaxed and sure of himself once more. “I wanted him, you know? A piece of you and all that, but…” Eggsy scowls, his brow dropping low over his eyes in a proper glower, “...your solicitor’s a bit of a slag, Harry.” Harry nods at this, it is a fair judgement. Harry pays her exorbitant sums to be one, after all. “They wouldn’t let anyone take anything, not even _Merlin_ ,” he says with outraged emphasis. “They said it would go into storage for family to pick through first and then the rest would be sold at auction.” Eggsy laughs, short and brittle, and then exclaims, incredulous, “As if anyone else wanted your dead dog, Harry!”

Harry stifles a smile behind his mug.

“So I stuck a tracker on ‘im,” Eggsy goes on, smug.

Harry blinks at this. It was a contingency he hadn’t even considered. That anyone would want his old things...it had never occurred to him. That Merlin would perhaps make sure that Harry’s belongings ended up in Islington, Harry had planned for. That Merlin might even keep an eye on the storage facility to see if anyone came to put in a claim, Harry had allowed for. The first few places that the goods had traveled to were all places that Harry had family that Merlin had known of. It would have satisfied Merlin’s curiosity and after a month Harry had felt it safe to ship the goods overseas. Even then he had moved them from country to country until he was sure the trail would have gone cold before moving them back into the UK.

But Harry hadn’t accounted for Eggsy.

He finds himself staring at the boy in shock.

“I wanted to know when Pickles was moved to the auction house so I could be there. Your solicitor didn’t care for me overmuch, so I figured she wouldn’t let me know when your shit went up for sale.”

Eggsy leans forward then, resting his elbows on the tabletop, his coffee cradled in both hands, steam curling up, making his brow shine with moisture, eyes bright and very green behind the veil.

“And then, well, then, something very fucking interesting started happening,” Eggsy says, triumphant and pleased, over the lip of his mug, “Mr. Pickles went on a very long trip.”

Feeling vaguely shaken, Harry stands and moves to the sink. He busies himself with filling it with hot water and soap and begins scrubbing out the pan.

It gives him something to focus on, the sounds of Eggsy’s fork clinking against the plate behind him subsumed by the roar of blood in his ears. Before him the clouds amass, surging quickly towards them, a wall of rain smearing down from the sky, like paint running, the wind churning the waters below.

Dishes begin to gather on the countertop to his left, but Harry ignores, ignores, ignores Eggsy moving about in his periphery. A blur of black and gold at the edges of his vision.

The water scalds his hands, but Harry doesn’t care, his fingertips shriveling up, the soap slippery, making cups and mugs slither away, the bubbles drying tight and syrupy thick around his wrists.

A moment before it happens, Harry can feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and that is all the warning he has before Eggsy has sunk against him from behind, his arms snaking around Harry’s waist to hold him, fast.

“ _Eggsy_ ,” Harry gasps, the breath he has been holding torn out of him, ragged.

“I missed you,” Eggsy says, low and fierce, arms tightening around Harry, his mouth pressed to Harry’s shoulder, open, panting, his warm breath seeping through the thin fabric to melt against Harry’s skin. “I missed you so bloody much.”

A sharp pain in Harry’s chest and he can feel the nascent ache begin behind his left eye, which heralds a migraine that will lay him flat for the rest of the afternoon. He has about forty-five minutes before he’s incapacitated. Perfect timing, as ever.

His control in tatters, Harry puts his hands over Eggsy’s, where they are resting on top of one another on Harry’s stomach. Their fingers tangle together, slick and slightly tacky from the soap, and Harry allows it, brief dizzying seconds of it, holding Eggsy’s hand under his, as he leans his weight back onto his heels, letting their bodies press together, letting himself be held fast, fast in the circle of Eggsy’s arms, relishing the warmth and solid breadth of Eggsy’s body cupping his, Eggsy’s nose nuzzling at his spine.

Longing is a barb in his gut, hooked on flesh and vital organs, ready to tear him apart as he says, hoarse and broken, “You have to go, Eggsy, you must.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone following along <3 <3


	4. Chapter Four

It’s pouring by the time they drive down to where Eggsy had left his car the night before.

Eggsy sits in the passenger seat glaring out the window, his body canted away from Harry’s, his arms folded across his chest, knees pressing into the door.

He’s still dressed in his trackies and hoodie, Harry hadn’t even let him shower, but the ache has turned into an incessant pounding now and he knows he’s not long for coherence. When he pulls off the road beside Eggsy’s car, blinking at the halos dancing at the corners of his eyes, he parks and turns to the face the boy, curled up in the seat next to him.

Harry lets himself have one moment.

One measly moment where he imagines it going differently.

Of kissing Eggsy in the kitchen. Of catching the boy up in his arms and gathering him in to feel the heat of his body, the weight of it, the strength and firmness of it against his own. He knows already how Eggsy kisses. The red supple lips blooming under Harry’s and the push of his tongue, greedy, into Harry’s mouth. Those soft little sounds he makes in the back of his throat, helpless and sweet. The way his hands are restless, as if he wants to touch all of Harry at once, stroking over Harry’s back and then palming at his chest, undoing buttons clumsily, tugging Harry’s shirt out of his trousers to skim fingertips up the jumping skin of Harry’s belly. That’s it, that’s as far as they got before, ages ago before Valentine and Kentucky and the end of the bloody world as they knew it, before Harry had pushed Eggsy away, but what if, what if, what if Harry wasn’t such a fucking coward? What if he had let Eggsy push his shirt off his shoulders, let him manhandle his belt off, his trousers down, let those hands, rough with callouses, yet soft with a reverent tenderness that makes Harry ache inside, as, dropping to his knees before him, Eggsy looks up. Looks up into Harry’s eyes the way he always has, with everything laid out in the open for Harry to see. Lust and desire and longing and _love_ and what does Harry give him in return? Does he know how Harry would worship him if he would only let himself? Could Harry let himself? Let himself sink his hands into the boy’s hair, a dark burnished bronze in the light pouring in through his kitchen windows, to map the shape of Eggsy’s skull beneath the pads of his fingers, the strands sifting through them in waves of shifting gold, before he grips them and brings Eggsy forward to run his nose along Harry’s cock, straining against the fabric of his pants. What sound would Eggsy make then? When he smells, for the first time, sees, for the first time, how much Harry fucking wants him? Would do anything for him? Adores him utterly? Would he moan for Harry? Would he open that pretty, cock-sure mouth over the ridge of Harry’s erection, press the hot wet heat of his breath through to tease at where Harry’s so hard he thinks he might actually die when Eggsy finally gets his mouth on him. Where he’s already leaking for Eggsy like a sodding 6th-former, precome dripping down his shaft and bleeding through and, oh, god, yes, Eggsy tastes him and, sucking at the wet sloppy mess Harry is making of his pants, hooks his fingers into the waistband and pulls _down—_

“You’re a fucking coward, Harry Hart,” is what Eggsy says in reality, echoing Harry’s own assessment, right before he throws open the door of Harry’s Range Rover, and stalks out into the storm. Harry watches as Eggsy drops into a crouch beside the driver’s side tyre, and, with a flash of silver in his hand, slashes it open. He stands and turns to stare at Harry, chest heaving, all of him already soaked through, rain streaming down his face, plastering his hair to his head, his clothes to his body.

“What the bloody hell are you playing at?” Harry shouts at him through the glass.      

Feeling like his head is caught in a vice Harry pushes open his door and steps out into the wild lashing shock of a spring storm. Raindrops pelt him, stinging icy bites on Harry’s cheeks and neck.

“Throwing a tantrum will not get you what you want,” Harry growls.

“You owe me an explanation,” Eggsy says, his voice shaking, all of him shaking from the driving force of the wind and the chill of the rain. “I’m not leaving until I get it.”

“You are acting like a child.”

“No,” Eggsy says, “ _you_ are.”

Harry closes his eyes. White halos pulse behind his lids and his blood hammers at his temples, against his forehead, and behind his eye. He stumbles, putting out a hand to catch himself lest he should fall.

“Harry? You ok?” Eggsy’s voice floats somewhere off to Harry’s left, disembodied.

“No, I’m not,” Harry admits, swallowing down bile. Everything spins off its axis and he collapses against the car door.

“All right, all right. Come on then, lean on me, Harry, that’s good.” There is an arm around Harry’s waist, taking his weight, and before he knows it Harry is lying down in the back seat, cheek pressed to the leather, and somewhere above him Eggsy is muttering, “You better not die on me, Harry. That’s just not fucking _on_.”

Harry has just enough time to feel thoroughly humiliated before he closes his eyes and tries his best not to vomit.

 

**********

 

They somehow manage to maneuver Harry into the house and up the stairs to his bedroom. Harry swallows down his pain pills while Eggsy strips him of his wet clothes. Harry doesn’t have time to feel anything but grateful as Eggsy tucks him underneath the duvet, naked and shivering uncontrollably.

Eggsy disappears for a little while, but he’s back soon enough, his body a pale ashen smudge moving about in the dim light. The blinds have been drawn, Harry realizes slowly, his head heavy, thick with blood. The only sound is the drumming of the rain on the roof and the thunder of his pulse in his ear.

“Budge up a bit for me, Harry,” Eggsy whispers, cool hands curving around Harry’s shoulders to manhandle him up to sitting as Eggsy slips in behind him, arranging the pillows at his back before tugging Harry back down to lie against him.

Everything swims a bit at all the sudden movements and Harry silently wills his stomach to calm, drawing in deep breaths. It’s a few minutes, therefore, before he realizes what has happened.

Eggsy’s chest is hard and wide and warm against Harry’s back, the springy hair that grows around his nipples and inside the cleft of his sternum tickling maddeningly across Harry’s shoulders. Eggsy’s legs cradle him, the crooks of his knees molding to the shape of Harry’s hips, the papery soles of his feet resting against the outside of Harry’s thighs. He can smell Eggsy, the mineral tang of rain overlaying the sweet musk of his body and the salt of his sweat. It’s incredibly intimate and Harry feels vulnerable and small. It’s not sexual, it’s comforting. Gentle. Safe.

 _Home_ , he thinks again, out of nowhere.

“Eggsy, what are you doing?” he croaks, rolling his head against Eggsy’s chest, into the crook of his shoulder, to peer up at him through one cracked eye.

“Someone has to take care of you, you daft sod,” Eggsy chides affectionately, petting at Harry’s hair, smoothing it back from his hot brow with deliciously cool fingertips. “You’re impossible, you know that right?”

Harry hums noncommittally, basking in the sensation as Eggsy dips his thumbs into Harry’s temples and begins to massage them, exerting subtle pressure against the tender skin. He loses himself a bit in the soft cadence of Eggsy’s voice as he murmurs in Harry’s ear.

“Me gran used to have a trick she used on my granddad. He would get headaches too, come home from work dizzy and sick from the pain. She’d lay him down like this and rub his eye sockets until he fell asleep. He said it felt really strange, but swore down it worked.” Eggsy huffs out a soft laugh. “I know it sounds like I’m taking the piss, but will you let me. Please?”

Harry hesitates for a moment, but he’s too weak right now to resist so he says, “All right,” and sinks deeper into Eggsy, letting his muscles go lax, giving himself over into the boy’s capable hands.

It _is_ strange at first. All of Harry’s instincts scream at him to twist away as Eggsy edges his thumbs down below the arches of Harry’s eyebrows and into his eye sockets, hooking into the bony ridge and pressing right into the heart of the fevered ache that has settled there.

He gasps and winces when Eggsy gets too close to the corner of Harry’s left eye, where the bullet had driven a path through the outside of Harry’s skull and Eggsy jerks instantly away, whispering apologies and soothing his hands up and into Harry’s hair, rubbing instead at his scalp for a bit until Harry relaxes once more. The feeling of Eggsy’s hands on him combined with the drunken feeling he gets as the drugs begin to finally take effect lures Harry into a place of dreamy calm, awash in Eggsy, his smell, his body, his touch.

Before he can remember why he mustn’t, Harry, clutching at that foolish wisp of feeling that keeps sounding the word _home_ in his mind, whispers, desperate and weak and altogether too honest, “Stay. _Eggsy_. Stay with me, don’t go.”

“Shhh.” Harry hears, Eggsy’s lips tucked close against his ear, before he drops off the precipice into sleep. “Shh, love, I ain't going anywhere.”


	5. Chapter Five

Harry wakes to the dusk dim light of early evening. Blue light seeps in through the cracks in the blinds and Harry listens, but can’t hear anything but the wind. The storm has passed.

He rolls over onto his back, slowly taking in the still disconcertingly unfamiliar details of his bedroom. Re-acquainting himself with the world. The pain pills make him sleep deep and hard. He tries not to take them, but he often fails.

Below him he can hear the muffled sounds of someone moving about in the kitchen and he startles slightly before remembering.

 _Eggsy_.

Harry gets up, sluggish and muzzy headed, and brushes the sour taste of sleep from his mouth, pushes wet fingers through his hair to tame it. He pauses for a moment, in front of his closet door, but, no, _no more hiding_ , so he puts on pyjamas and a tee shirt instead, and then goes downstairs barefoot.

The kitchen is filled with the scent of roasting chicken, piquant with herbs and citrus and mouthwatering browning butter and garlic. The kettle is just beginning to boil as Harry leans into the jamb, watching. Eggsy’s standing at the counter, his back to Harry, his weight leant into his right hip, dressed in neon blue trackies and a white vest, the gold chain he wears, gleaming, brash and bright, against the pale freckled skin of his neck. His hair is wet, the tips boot black with it and slicked together into sharp points, standing up from the crown of his head where he’s carded his fingers through.

Harry’s been in love four times in his life.

The first was a woman he met at uni, Violet Sumner. Vi was Harry’s soulmate in every sense of the word, except sexual. Harry's gay and Violet was...well, Violet. Which is a simple way of saying that she wasn’t interested in sex in any of it’s forms and was more interested in becoming the next Jane Bond than she was with anything else. They got on splendidly. They spent their twenties and the early part of their thirties living together in her family’s apartments in the Kensington mews, her working for MI6 and him for Kingsman, except for one two year stint somewhere towards the end when Harry fell hopelessly in love with a beautiful Italian auto mechanic named Luca and made the decision to move in with him in his tiny bedsit on the Marylebone Road. Harry lived there, delirious with love and fueled by passionate sex and cigarettes and utterly blind to the fact that Luca had been cheating on him with anything possessed of a cock in London the entire time. When it all fell spectacularly apart Violet had taken him back in. But by then it was too late and Vi got breast cancer and died two years later and left Harry alone and wretched. The third was an ill fated affair with a North Korean librarian cum spy that started in April of 1998 in Tokyo when Harry had been tasked with preventing the assassination of Japan’s Prime Minister, had consisted almost entirely of emails and phone calls with liaisons sprinkled between when they were occasionally in the same place at the same time, and had culminated in a single glorious fortnight in August of 2004 on a tiny island in the South Pacific before Jae-hee had had to go back to Pyongyang and do his duty and marry a woman.

Eggsy is the fourth.

“You take lemon in your tea, Harry?” Eggsy asks without turning around, holding one half of the vivid yellow fruit in the cup of his hand, forearm akimbo, slanting out from the side of his body while he pours with the other. “I’ve some left over from the chicken.”

Harry swallows thickly and says, “Depends.” Moving forward into the room. “What kind is it?”

“Souchong,” Eggsy says, singsong, his gaze sliding slowly up Harry’s body to meet his eyes as Harry comes around the island.

“Then, yes, please,” Harry murmurs, voice pitched low and husky from his nap, “just a squeeze.” Placing a hand on Eggsy’s warm hip briefly as he moves past him to retrieve the milk from the fridge. When he returns to Eggsy’s side he pours some into his cup and then hovers it over Eggsy’s who nods. “Say when,” Harry says, and after a few seconds Eggsy wraps his hand around Harry’s wrist, thumb resting light against Harry’s thudding pulse, and whispers, “When,” his breath brushing against Harry’s neck and sending a hot little thrill skating down his spine.

Harry, blushing to the tips of his ears, returns the milk to the fridge and then, leaving some space between them, says,

“Thank you, Eggsy.”

“Welcome,” Eggsy says, shrugging. He leans back against the counter’s edge, feet kicked out in front of him, ankles crossed.

“No,” Harry says, “I mean it. Thank you. For getting me home. And for…” Harry trails off, searching for the right word. He takes a sip of tea, rolling it around his mouth, before finding one that will do. “...for _comforting_ me.”

Eggsy’s eyes smile at Harry over the rim of his mug, and his mouth is red and wet when he pulls it away to say, “It’s nuffing, Harry, don’t think about it. Come on then, the chicken will be done soon, have you got any veg we can fix with?”

So Harry takes Eggsy down into the cellar and subsequently blows his mind.

“You mad fuck,” Eggsy says, twirling around slowly in the center of the aisle that runs down the center, eyes wide.

The space is divided into temperature controlled cells. Wine, dry goods, frozen, and the largest by far: the refrigerated section. Here resides Harry’s perishables: dairy and veg and fruit.

“Potatoes or brussel sprouts do you think?” Harry asks, as the door clicks shut behind them. Eggsy wraps his arms around himself against the chill, rocking back and forth from one foot to the other.

“Sprouts,” he says absently, his eyes running along the shelves, a dumbstruck smile curling his lips.

Harry, who is absolutely not looking at the way Eggsy’s nipples have drawn up tight and hard beneath his vest, nor at the way that he’s broken out in goosebumps, stippling the hard bulges of his biceps, and raising the fair hair on his arms, takes up the bag of brussel sprouts and then goes to fetch a Sancerre that will pair nicely with the chicken from the chilled wine section. Eggsy trails along behind him, muttering something about posh gits with too much money under his breath.

Harry carves the chicken while Eggsy sautes the sprouts in butter with garlic and shallots.

When Harry asks him how he learned to roast a bird, Eggsy’s smile goes fond and soft and he tells Harry about his gran—the same one from before—who taught him to cook while he was spending his summer hols with them in Wales as a child.

Harry listens and nods and refills Eggsy’s glass when it dips just below half full. He doesn’t think about how Eggsy’s mouth would be a cool silky cave to lick into. He doesn’t think of how he would taste of stone fruit ripened in the sun, of river stones polished by coursing waters flush with snowmelt, or the crisp bite of teeth into a young, juicy grape.

Harry has been in love four times now. He is well acquainted with the heady reel of the beginning. When his body is reacting, urging him to plunge ahead, to throw caution to the wind. When he wants, he wants, he _wants_.

It is marrow deep and primal, a riptide, swift and dangerous, pulling him inexorably out and out. It feels inevitable. It feels exquisite. He is thrillingly alive with it.

Harry has been in love. He has been in love with a man who did not love him back. He has been in love with a man who did, but for whom the timing could never be right. He has been in love with a woman, truly, deeply.

Harry is in love with Eggsy, he adores him, would do anything for him, and that is precisely why he must deny him. Harry doesn’t feel old, but compared to Eggsy he has lived a lifetime already. Eggsy deserves a chance to live his own. To experience all the wonders of youth, of growing into himself, without being tied down to a man who has already settled into his skin.

They sit at the table together and it’s terribly lovely. Harry is glad to have it, a small treasure to take out and remember when Eggsy is gone. The boy’s fingers and lips shiny-slick with grease as he pulls meat from a wing, a thigh, with his teeth, his hands. Smiling around green bites of sprouts, cheeky, impish, beautiful. Cheeks flushed from the wine that Harry keeps pouring for him.

They chat about everything and nothing. About Eggsy's latest missions, about Merlin, about islands off the coast of Wales, and what it was like to wake up from a coma. They avoid the landmines; their relationship, the kiss, Harry's faked death. It is one of those perfect evenings, unhurried, a spool of time that stretches like the delicate skin of a bubble around them. For pudding Harry makes them affogatos spiked with Amaretto and they retire to the living room to sprawl bonelessly on Harry’s sofa while they eat them with tiny spoons. Eggsy makes decadent sounds in the back of his throat as if he’s being tortured in the most superbly sinful fashion and Harry’s cock swells a little with each one, until he’s half hard and sweating beneath his shirt. His breathing goes shallow, lungs tight, as Eggsy’s plush lips close around the spoon and _suck_ , Eggsy’s eyes, lazy and dark and heavy-lidded, watching Harry get hard for him, watching Harry thinking about the sweet sticky taste of him, watching Harry’s eyes slip down the lavish spread of his body to where Eggsy’s foot is curled near Harry’s hip, about how it would feel a few inches higher, curving around his cock, about what sort of sounds Eggsy would make if Harry kissed him, touched him, made him _come_ —

“I’m afraid,” Harry says, pushing abruptly to sitting, his hands shaking a little, “that it’s far past time for bed.”

Eggsy groans, this time in exasperation, in fact, it’s almost a growl, as he sits up, eyes blazing. “Harry, what the fuck do I have to do to get you to kiss me?”

Harry shakes his head. “I’m not going to—”

“Why not?” Eggsy asks, his face growing red in frustration. “You ain’t my boss no more. As far as the world’s concerned you died. You don’t exist. It’s just us, Harry. What the buggering fuck are you so afraid of?”

Harry splutters, “I’m not—”

“Then do it,” Eggsy cuts him off, scooting closer to Harry on the sofa until Harry’s knee is pressing into Eggsy’s thigh. “Do it, Harry. We’ve got nothin' to lose, bruv. Kiss me, Harry. Harry, kiss me, please.”

Harry’s head swims a bit. The proximity of Eggsy, his scent, the incredible heat of his skin leaking through his trackies, Harry is lost in it.

He shakes his head again, this time to clear it. “Eggsy, you deserve much more than a snog and a grope on the sofa with a man who is old enough to be your father.”

Eggsy snorts derisively. “I’m not sure what sorts of things _you_ got up to, Harry, but I don’t want to come on Dean’s cock, arright?” Harry’s mouth drops open at that and he blinks at Eggsy, speechless, but Eggsy just chuckles and leans closer, until Harry can feel his breath again, this time brushing over the sensitive skin of his lips, can smell the tantalizing elixir of liqueur and vanilla and espresso, and then the sudden hot grip of Eggsy’s hand as he slides it behind Harry’s neck. “Kiss me, Harry, you gorgeous idiot. Kiss me. _Harry—_ ”


	6. Chapter Six

“Eggsy, stand down.”

It comes out more command than request and Eggsy, who is intimately acquainted with Harry Hart, superspy, goes instantly, scooting back into the opposite corner of the sofa. It’s Pavlovian almost, an ingrained response of respect to the man who had put him forward at Kingsman, to his mentor, and Harry is extremely gratified to see it. It calms something in him. He does not like to be cornered.

He takes a moment to collect himself, thinking, _fuck this_ , and then says, with more aplomb than he really feels, “Eggsy, I won’t insult you by telling you that you don’t know what you want. You obviously do—”

Eggsy lurches forward, mouth open, eager to concur, but Harry holds up a quelling hand. “I am not finished.”

Eggsy subsides, his mouth thinning in a petulant line, eyes narrowed, calculating, as if he is trying to figure out Harry’s next move and how he will counter it.

Harry takes a deep breath. Out with it. “I am also not going to pretend that the feeling is not mutual—”

Harry ignores the stunned smile that trembles at Eggsy’s lips at this admission, the flare of hope in his eyes.

Onwards.

“But I can’t pretend that I don’t have deep reservations about us consummating an affair and I—.”

Eggsy groans, low and heartfelt, and slouches down against the armrest in an exaggerated display of displeasure. Whinging, “Har-ry, come _on_.”  

“Eggsy if you will be so kind as to hear me out, I believe we can resolve this in such a way that we will be able to enter into a decision that benefits us both.”

Eggsy perks up at that, obviously interested, sitting straighter and tugging his vest down from where it had ridden up around his ribs.

“Most of what I have to say is obvious,” Harry continues. “I am thirty years older than you. That is not insignificant.”

Eggsy cocks his chin at Harry. “I ain’t a kid.”

Harry gives him a look and Eggsy just raises his eyebrows.

Harry starts again. “Like I was saying—”  He doesn’t get far.

“Wait asec. Hold up. You like me,” Eggsy says, cutting him off, _again_ , and then, head thrown back in jubilation, eyes squeezed shut, crows, “Harry Hart fancies _me_!”

“Christ.” Harry rubs his fingers across his forehead.

“You like me, Harry,” Eggsy says, softer now. Smiling like a loon, and, God, he’s edible, so proud and _happy_ , and Harry looks away, scrunching up his nose in a poor effort to stop himself from returning the look tenfold.

When he feels safe, when the muscles in his cheeks have stopped tugging on his lips, Harry looks back over at Eggsy and it proves to be a monumentally bad decision because Eggsy is grinning, incandescent, hitting Harry with the full force of his charm and his joy, and Harry is helpless, just absolutely at his fucking mercy, as Eggsy mouths, _You like me_ , at him, his eyes wide and green and bright.

“Are you quite finished?” Harry asks, dry as he can, but the jig is up. He’s played his hand, the cat is out of the god damned bag, and yet there are still things he could say. Should say. Must.

“I don’t know, are _you_?” Eggsy returns, his eyebrows arching insolently. He spreads wide his hands. “Harry, there ain’t nothing more I need to know. Now come on, come over here and give us a kiss.”

That won’t do. Harry doesn’t say anything, just levels him with another look, sterner than the first, less indulgent, and Eggsy holds up his hands as if in surrender. “All right, all right. Say your piece.”

Harry takes a deep breath, thoughts scattered. “I don’t want to patronize you, Eggsy. I know that you aren’t a child.” Eggsy grunts in agreement. “But you should be with someone your own age. Someone who can give you what you deserve. Take you out, court you properly. I live too far away for me to give you those things, Eggsy. I’m injured. I’m no longer a Kingsman. You’re just beginning. You have a place in the world now and the means to do anything you like. To choose anyone you like. And you deserve to have them, Eggsy. You deserve to be treated like the wonderful young man you are.”

Harry is in earnest. Even if it means letting Eggsy go, he honestly believes what he is saying is true. So when Eggsy laughs incredulously at Harry, blood rushes up his chest to burn in his cheeks in indignation.

“Harry, I don’t think you understand,” Eggsy soothes, seeing the clench of Harry’s jaw, leaning forward. “That isn’t what it’s like.”   

“What do you mean?”

“People my age, they don’t ‘court’ each other.”

“Then what do they do?”

“They get off,” Eggsy says, shrugging. “Tinder, Grindr, it’s all about hooking up, innit?”

“So if you like someone…”

“I ask ‘em back to mine, to watch a movie or something and…” Eggsy makes a crude wanking gesture with his hand.

“Jesus,” Harry murmurs.

“It ain’t all bad,” Eggsy says, sounding amused at Harry’s prudishness. “It can be proper nice, actually. No muss, no fuss. Everyone gets what they want.”

“‘No muss, no fuss’,” Harry repeats, slightly horrified. “Eggsy, that is very much _not_ what I want. Yet another reason why this probably wouldn’t work.”

“Harry,” Eggsy says gently, looking at Harry like he’s slow to catch on. “That’s not what I want with you either.”

“No?”

Eggsy shakes his head, biting his bottom lip, eyes crinkled in fondness.

“Nah, I don’t want to take you back to mine, put on a movie, nut, and then leave.”

“You don’t.”

“No,” Eggsy says. “Or, well, I mean, I do, but that’s not _all_ that I want with you.”

“What is it that you want with me?” Harry’s heart is pounding. He feels slightly light headed.

“Everything,” Eggsy says, soft, and he’s closer now, how did Harry not notice that? When had he moved? The boy is perched over Harry’s left knee which is drawn up on the sofa cushion, knelt up, his right hand sliding along the sofa back, inching towards Harry.

“Everything.” Harry’s eyes snag on Eggsy’s mouth, the luxe velveteen of his lips, before sweeping up to meet his eyes.

“Yeah,” Eggsy says, as if it is that simple. “Want to give you everything you want, Harry. You want to date? Let’s date. I’ll go first even.” His hand comes to rest, braced behind Harry on the armrest, so that Eggsy is leaning in, his chest inches from Harry’s own. Harry can feel the heat of him, smell his skin. From this close Harry can see the freckles on his collarbones, his ink black eyelashes, the blush on his cheeks. The way his eyes curve into teasing half moons as he whispers, “Harry, you wanna watch a movie?”


	7. Chapter Seven

“I think we can dispense with the pretense, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Eggsy breathes, brushing the tip of his nose against Harry’s. “Yeah, anything, Harry, anything, just—”

It’s soft.

A bare skim of lips.

A tease of breath.

The sticky catch of their mouths, making quiet, intimate sounds between them.

So different from that crushing kiss in Harry’s office all those months ago.

Now, here, Harry can slip his hands up to cradle Eggsy’s face between them, bury his fingers in the short feathered strands of his hair and bring him closer. Eggsy goes, lets the weight of his body sink down into Harry, a small moan thrumming in the back of his throat as Harry changes the angle and parts Eggsy’s lips with his own, kissing him deeper.

Harry feels bruised with the tenderness of it, a sweet ache pulsing in his navel, radiating out in a warm glow, down his legs and up his chest, suffusing him.

The first slide of Harry’s tongue into Eggsy’s mouth makes Eggsy groan, a cracked open shocked sort of sound, and he trembles, trembles, shivering all over, before pushing forward to straddle Harry, sitting in his lap, his hands clutching deliriously at Harry’s shoulders, curving around his neck, stroking up and then back down.

Eggsy’s mouth is hot and wet and his lips are petal soft and slick, and Harry is lost, lost completely in him.

“I can’t believe it,” Eggsy murmurs between kisses. Moving his lips over Harry’s face, his brow, his jaw, his cheeks. “Harry, I’ve waited so long. Oh, God, Harry I feel like I’m dying here. It hurts so good, please, Harry, kiss me. Kiss me again. Don’t stop.”

Harry does, kisses him and kisses him, doesn’t stop, couldn’t stop now that he has begun. He revels in the way Eggsy melts into his touch, his body pliant, warm supple skin that Harry molds with his hands. He fills his palms with the extravagant plenty of Eggsy’s body, torched molten gold in the lamplight, shoulders and biceps and pecs. Rubbing down the curve of Eggsy’s spine to the hem of his vest, fingers tucking underneath, fisting in the small of Eggsy’s back to urge him closer, and closer still.

Until they are pressed together. Eggsy’s elbows resting on Harry’s shoulders, his hands mussing Harry’s hair, their mouths moving together, slippery and thick with tongue.

There is a spare inch left between them and when Eggsy closes it, slides down to close the distance between their hips, and touches Harry for the first time, where they are hard and straining, they both gasp and startle apart.

Foreheads pushing together, bone to bone, they look down into the dark cup of their bodies and Eggsy moves, a slow roll of his hips, and Harry feels the ache gather in his hips, his bollocks, throbbing in his cock, his navel.

“Oh, fuck,” Eggsy pants succinctly. And Harry can only agree, can only nod his head, can only grip Eggsy’s hips hard in his hands, and urge him forward, begging, “Eggsy. Eggsy, _yes_.”

“Fuck,” Eggsy says again, head thrown back in a wanton display, back bowed, hips writhing. Harry holds him by his waist, lets him arch and move, sinuous, with an athlete’s fluid grace. Watches as the crimson blush spreads up Eggsy’s neck to burn in his cheeks, his nipples tightening into dark knots beneath his shirt, just begging for the attention of Harry’s mouth, the hard bulge of his cock in his trackies, demanding the same. Harry wants him bare, wants all that buttery skin a deliquescence under his tongue, but Eggsy had said, _let me go first_ , Eggsy had said, _I want everything_ , Eggsy had said this was how dates went, so Harry holds on.

Holds on.

Grasping desperately at the fraying edges of his sanity, watching Eggsy rub off against him.

“‘M so close,” Eggsy says, words slightly slurred, bending forward to capture Harry’s mouth once more. “Harry, Harry, ’m gonna come.” They both moan into the kiss, rocking together down below. Harry’s pyjamas rub against the soaked head of his cock, a rough scrape of wet cotton, and he bites at the plush swell of Eggsy’s bottom lip, sucks it, his hands grabbing overflowing handfuls of Eggsy’s gloriously round arse, grinds him down, feet braced against the floor, and thrusts up.

Eggsy descends into a litany of muttered curses as Harry begins to move with purpose, burying his face in Eggsy’s neck, he sucks on the hard ridge of his Adam’s apple, Eggsy's pulse point a thunder against his tongue, and feels his orgasm build inside him, a hot insistent pounding, until Eggsy whispers his name, quiet and broken into his ear, “ _Harry_ ,” and it crests and blooms, shuddering out through him in wave upon wave upon wave of intense obliterating pleasure.

Eggsy rides him through it, and Harry feels it when the boy comes a few moments later, a strangled exhalation, and a warm gush of semen through his trackies, as Eggsy goes rigid, eyes shut tight.    

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Eggsy chants, breathless, coming down, pressing his mouth to Harry’s, kissing him sloppy and wet and off center. He smells of sex and sweat, incredible, and Harry wraps his arms around him, holding him close.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Eggsy says, what feels like an eternity later, pulling slightly away and grimacing down at the mess they have made. “I haven’t done that in ages.” Smiling. His mouth a kiss swollen red, his hair a wreck. “Harry,” kissing him with his lips curving in a smile, “you drive me mad.”

Harry finds himself at a loss for words.

The slow saltwater tide of his blood, surging and ebbing through his veins. He feels sleepy, sated, and singularly happy.

“Harry, say something,” Eggsy says, sounding worried. “Was it all right?”

“It was perfect,” Harry says, opening his eyes slowly to look up at the boy. Eggsy is limned by the soft light from the lamp, a sliver of silver surrounding him, golden and lovely, and he might be the most beautiful thing Harry has ever seen. “ _You_ are perfect.”

Eggsy’s smile is lopsided, disbelieving, and he brushes it off, “Oi, you’re a bit pissed ain’t you?” His voice thick with affection as he climbs off Harry’s lap and holds his hand down to help Harry up. “Come on then, let’s wash up.”

Harry tugs.

“Harry,” Eggsy says, laughing as Harry tries to pull him back down across his thighs. “Harry!”

Harry relents. Reluctantly. Takes Eggsy’s hand and lets himself be pulled up. He feels drunk but he’s not.

“I’m not pissed,” Harry says, wanting to make that clear.

“Yeah, ok,” Eggsy says, but it sounds doubtful, self-deprecating.

“I’m not,” Harry insists, leaning down to kiss him softly. “I’m just utterly, utterly besotted I’m afraid.”

“Yeah?” Eggsy pulls away, still sounding nonplussed.

“Yeah,” Harry says, throat tight, kissing him again. “Now let’s have a shower. We’re not all accustomed to the fevered frenzy of a Tinder date, you know.”

“All right, old man,” Eggsy says, laughing, slapping Harry’s arse playfully as he walks by him, making him feel anything but old. “Go on then, I like to watch you walk away.”

“Cheeky bastard,” Harry murmurs, but he is more aware of the sway of his hips as he climbs the stairs than he has ever been before. It makes him blush like a bloody teenager, which, he guesses, was Eggsy’s goal.

 _The shower_ , he thinks all of a sudden, a tiny explosion inside his mind, whiting out all his other thoughts.

Eggsy.

With him.

In the shower.

 _Naked_.

Christ.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \0/


	8. Chapter Eight

The light in the en suite is blinding after the darkness of his bedroom. Blinking white spots from his eyes, Harry reaches in to turn on the shower and then, nodding his head towards the door to the loo, says, “I’ll just be a moment,” to Eggsy, before disappearing behind it.

His pyjamas have wicked to his skin, sticky, clammy, and there’s no dignity in it as he scrubs at the come caught in his pubic hair with one hand while he holds his soft cock in the other, has a piss. Giving it up as a bad job Harry sighs and walks back out into the bathroom. Eggsy is inside the shower, the glass panes fogged with steam, his body a wraith among the clouds.

Harry catches sight of himself in the mirror and stops.

Turns.

Looks.

And is immediately drawn away.

Here is the marble counter, black with twisting veins of white lightning crackling through. It matches the floor, the shower. A freestanding, white porcelain tub, deep and wide, sits on the other side of the sinks beneath a floor to ceiling window, which runs the width of the bathroom and affords a breathtaking view of the fjord. Harry is accustomed to lying in it in the evening and watching the storms roll in and break over the land.

It is a beautiful bathroom, if austere. 

His gaze finishes the circuit and comes to rest once more on himself. He suppresses the urge to lift his chin, suck in his stomach, square his shoulders.

Here is a man. He is fifty-six and thin. Weight and muscle slow in returning after six months spent prone in a bed. The promise is there, before Kentucky he had been in perfect shape; Kingsman had seen to that. But for now his skin hangs a bit on the sharp contours of his bones, which stand out prominent at his cheeks, his wrists, his ribs, and clavicle. Looser at his neck, his belly, his triceps, his arse. Nothing that time in his basement gym can’t solve, toning and tightening.

The scars are another matter.

There’s nothing to be done for those.

But then, Eggsy will have his own by now too.

“You comin’?” Eggsy's raised voice is overly loud in the quiet space, and Harry runs a hand through his hair, dark brown rent through with silver, with white. He touches the runnel that cuts across his left temple and over his ear, rubs at the feathered scar tissue that permanently crinkles the corner of his left eye.

He opens the shower door and steps inside.

The steam rises to meet him, twining around his ankles and calves, misting down on him like a fine rain.  Eggsy is standing beneath the spray, head tipped back, rinsing the shampoo from his hair. He cracks open one eye and smiles.

Harry steps closer and reaches for him. Runs his hands over Eggsy’s sides, over his hips, and down the outside of his thighs, tucks his fingers beneath the swell of his arse and tugs him forward, until Eggsy is pressed up against him, raised up on his toes, silky slick and warm and smelling like Harry’s soap. His mouth is soft and wet and opens to Harry’s immediately, his tongue pushing in, his hands tangling in Harry’s hair, pulling him down.

“You having second thoughts?” Eggsy asks, breathless, as Harry chases droplets of water down his throat, sucking at the gleaming tracks they leave and delighting in the way Eggsy angles his head, giving Harry more room to work, at the way Eggsy’s skin pinks and reddens beneath his mouth, at the way his hands clench reflexively around Harry’s skull.

“Mmm,” Harry hums, kissing the boy’s jaw up to his ear. “I’m having many, many thoughts.”

Eggsy chuckles and Harry can feel it vibrate against his lips as he ducks down to taste the hollow of his throat.

“What sorts of thoughts?”

“Entirely naughty ones, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah?” Eggsy sounds surprised so Harry pulls away to squint down at him, water caught in his eyelashes, spangling his sight.

Eggsy’s eyes, blue in this light, almost turquoise, flick back and forth between Harry’s.

“You’re sure now?”

“Are you?”

Eggsy nods, his hands sliding down to cup Harry’s neck, his thumbs stroking over Harry’s cheeks. “Been sure for a while now.”

“Then so am I.”

Eggsy’s grin is luminous and Harry gathers him close, kisses Eggsy’s mouth, teases groans from his throat as his hands roam over Eggsy’s body, insatiable. Against his thigh Harry can feel Eggsy’s cock jerk and lengthen, growing hard. Harry’s own is flaccid, spent, but he feels flush with arousal, his heart beating fast, his breath speeding up, his skin tingling everywhere they touch.

When he pulls away Eggsy looks dazed and he sways a little as Harry sinks down onto his knees.

“Harry.” His voice is choked as Harry licks at the crease where Eggsy’s thigh meets his abdomen. “You don’t have to, yeah?”

The marble is unforgiving beneath Harry’s knees, but it’s worth it when he looks up the length of Eggsy’s body to the way Eggsy’s lips are parted, the way his eyes are black with pupil, the way he’s looking at Harry, like he’s starving.

Harry noses over the trembling plane of Eggsy’s stomach, feeling the flex of muscle beneath his lips, hot slippery skin against his tongue. Eggsy’s cock bumps against his cheek and slowly, Harry turns his mouth to breath against it.

“Oh, God, Harry,” Eggsy gasps, his hands landing soft on top of Harry’s head, disbelieving, as if he daren’t hope.

“You have a beautiful cock, Eggsy,” Harry says, with teasing equanimity, wrapping his hand around the base and thumbing Eggsy’s foreskin down so that the head can pop out, swollen and wet. Harry’s mouth waters. Says, “I think I’d quite like to have it down my throat,” before he leans forward and fits the plump rosy tip inside his mouth.

Eggsy moans and arches involuntarily, thrusting deep until his cock is nudging up against the back of Harry’s throat and, startled, Harry has to pull back slightly, take in breaths through his nose, steadying his hands on Eggsy’s hips.

“Shit, fuck, sorry,” Eggsy says, starting to step away, but Harry shakes his head, as much as he can with his mouth full of cock, and squeezes Eggsy’s hips, holding him in place. Harry works his tongue against the vein on the underside of Eggsy’s cock, sucking on the head before he pulls off, looking up.

“I want you to,” he says, and hell if his voice isn’t already hoarse. “Fuck my mouth, Eggsy. I want to feel you every time I swallow tomorrow.”

Eggsy, his wet hair falling in dark strands over his forehead, his cheeks blushed crimson, nods once, a quick jerk of his chin, and Harry takes him back in.

Eggsy’s cock is slippery, gliding easily between Harry’s lips, but it’s thick and growing impossibly thicker, stretching him until he can feel the corners of his mouth start to ache. Harry ignores it, thinking instead about how it would feel to have that hard thickness splitting his arse open, pounding deep inside him, and he groans, bobbing forward.

Eggsy’s hands fist in Harry’s hair and his scalp stings and sparks race down his spine as Eggsy fucks in, his hips rocking forward, his heavy prick dragging against Harry’s tongue. He tastes of salt, smells of soap and musk, and Harry swallows against his leaking slit, letting precome slip down his throat in a salt-bitter trickle.

“You look fucking incredible, Harry,” Eggsy is panting. Harry opens his eyes and looks up at him, the hard angles of his body straining beautifully, water streaming over him, cutting bright tracks across his skin. “You’re gorgeous with my cock in your mouth. Bloody ‘ell, ‘arry, ‘m already close.” He cups Harry’s cheek with one hand and Harry turns slightly away from it, letting the head of Eggsy’s cock bulge against his cheek so that Eggsy can stroke himself through the thin barrier of skin.

“You feel so good. Oh, oh, fuck. _Harry_.”

He _is_ close, Harry can feel it in the way Eggsy’s rhythm is faltering, becoming erratic, fucking in deep and then pulling almost all the way out in short, quick little thrusts. Harry sucks harder, slips his hands around to Eggsy’s arse, kneads his cheeks with his fingertips, urging him to slide deeper.

Eggsy comes like that, buried in Harry’s throat, his balls slapping against Harry’s chin, hand holding Harry there. Harry’s nose buried in his pubic hair, as Harry tucks his fingertips into the slick crack of Eggsy’s arse, pressing _in_ , and he floods Harry’s mouth with hot throbbing pulses of his come, Harry’s name shouted up towards the ceiling to echo around them.

Eggsy collapses against the wall and pulls Harry up and into him, kissing him deep, licking the taste of himself from Harry’s mouth. Mumbling, “Take me to bed, Harry. I want to sleep next to you, want to know if you snore or not, want to wake up with you. Please.”

“Yes,” Harry murmurs against Eggsy’s lips, kissing the apple blush of his cheek, the wet tickling curl of his lashes, the tip of his nose. His knees burn and ache and his cock is still soft and his throat feels like sandpaper is grating it when he whispers, “Yes,” into Eggsy’s ear, but he feels utterly content.

For the first time in a very long time Harry starts to look forward to tomorrow.


	9. Chapter Nine

Harry’s fingers tremble a little as he does up his pyjama buttons, drags a comb through his wet hair. His back protests, his knees click, his vision is a little blurry at the periphery. His breath is shallow, his chest tight, diaphragm high and pressing on his lungs. _Overdid it_ , he thinks, with a rueful shake of his head.

The bedroom is dark and slightly chilly when he exits his closet to find Eggsy in the center of the bed, his body glowing in the limpid light, gold amongst the white shoals of the fluffy duvet. His head is turned, facing the window, which, Harry sees, he has cracked open. The sound of the waves on the beach roars gently in the background and the cold fingers of a subarctic breeze reach in beneath the raised sill to ruffle the hairs on the back of Harry’s neck.

Harry shivers.

“I love the smell of the sea,” Eggsy says wistfully, a moment later, rolling his head on the pillow to look at Harry as he approaches. “Reminds me of Wales.”

Harry turns off the light, climbs into bed, and, before settling, leans down and kisses Eggsy, Eggsy’s lips cool and smooth against his own. He tastes of mint and smells like Harry, which is vaguely disconcerting at first. It dissipates once they are both ensconced beneath the duvet, facing each other, Harry’s knee between Eggsy’s, legs interweaved, the pads of his toes curling against the back of Eggsy’s calf. Harry tucks his face into the curve of Eggsy’s neck and noses about until he finds a patch of skin that doesn’t reek of his own soap or shampoo. He burrows there, breathing deep the sweet, sleepy scent that is purely Eggsy.

“I’ve got to go back tomorrow,” Eggsy says, voice hushed and low and private, and Harry nods, letting his eyes slip shut as Eggsy runs his fingers through his hair, smoothing it back from his brow.

“I’ll come back, yeah? And it’ll be your turn. Let you court me proper like.”

“Mmm, and is this how your dates usually end?” Harry asks, voice muffled by Eggsy’s throat. Eggsy’s laugh burrs softly against his lips.

“Nah,” Eggsy says, and Harry can hear the smile in his voice, warm and fond. “Ain’t nothing usual about you, Harry.”

Harry makes a scoffing noise and tightens his arm around Eggsy’s waist, pulling him closer. Eggsy’s skin is warm and soft. He’s only wearing a pair of boxer briefs, tight, tiny, black affairs that Harry will enthusiastically enjoy divesting him of at some later date, but for now there is only the furnace of Eggsy’s body and his hand sunk into Harry’s hair and the way he fits himself into Harry’s arms like he has always belonged there.

Harry’s right on the cusp of sleep when he hears Eggsy whisper, almost as if he is half hoping that Harry has already gone, “What’re you doing out here, Harry?”

Harry blinks his eyes open and Eggsy, no doubt feeling the flicker of Harry’s lashes against his neck, pulls away so that they are looking into each other’s eyes.

The shades are open and a waxing gibbous moon throws its pale blue light in upon them. Eggsy is backlit by it, the shape of him outlined in moonlight, his face etched in shadows.

Harry sighs. It is nothing less than what Eggsy deserves. He demanded an explanation outside in the rain and Harry knows that he is owed one. Harry wishes that he were a little more awake than he is, he feels heavy, limbs ponderous, on the verge of sleep, but he marshals his thoughts and meets Eggsy’s eyes.

“When I woke up, I didn’t remember everything at first. I didn’t know who I was and neither did the hospital staff. At first they just assumed I was a casualty of the massacre in the church, but it came back slowly.”

Eggsy nods and Harry takes a deep breath.

“By the time I was released I could remember everything, but I was no longer the same man who had walked into that church. I was injured, quite possibly beyond repair. I had migraines that left me incapacitated. The bullet had damaged my M1 cortex which controls muscle movement. My hands shook uncontrollably sometimes; there was no way I could hold a gun.” Harry pauses here, but Eggsy is listening intently, his brow knit, his eyes pinched at their corners. Harry pushes ahead.

“I pledged my life to Kingsman so long as I was able to serve them capably and I could no longer do that in good faith. I was a liability. To be honest, Eggsy, I thought you all would be better off without me. Let your generation take over. With Arthur gone you would find someone who could update Kingsman, bring it into the future. So I contacted my solicitor. She sent me money and a new identity and I came here. This is always where I intended to end up. It just happened sooner than I had planned.”

“I never pegged you for a coward.” Eggsy’s voice is hard, his words volatile, and Harry bites down on a sharp retort.

“I can see why it seems that way to you. I’m sorry for any pain that I caused. I didn’t think—”

“You didn’t think, what? That I would be fucking devastated?”

Harry startles at that. “No, I—”

“Or Merlin? What about him? He was your best friend, Harry.”

“Merlin is fine. You were all doing splendidly. In fact—”

“You were what? Keeping an eye on us? Well, fuck you, Harry, because you weren’t with me at night and you weren’t with Merlin every fucking week when he would visit your grave. You didn’t see nothin, just ops, and that don’t mean shite.”

Harry feels hot and off balance. It shocks him a little, this visceral reaction on Eggsy’s part. Harry hadn't expected that. Eggsy had kissed him, yes. He had had what Merlin had dryly called, a “school-boy crush” on Harry. Putting his own feelings for the boy aside, he hadn’t thought that his death would affect Eggsy so. Chastened, Harry says the only thing that might mean anything to the boy right now, “Eggsy, I’m sorry. If I had known. If I thought what I was doing would hurt you...Eggsy, my dear boy, I’m sorry.”

He is met with silence. Eggsy rolls onto his back and glares at the ceiling for a bit and Harry lets him. He’s not sure how to bridge the sudden chasm that has opened up between them.

When Eggsy turns back to face him Harry fully expects him to say good bye. He braces for it, steels his face against betraying the agony he feels inside. Eggsy doesn’t deserve to be burdened with his broken heart.

“You know the board are tryin’ to bring in someone from MI6 to be Arthur?”

The words land like a splash of cold water in Harry’s face. His skin prickles. “What?”

“Yeah. Most of the senior knights were lost after V-Day and the rest of us aren’t ready. Merlin’s pissed off.”

“As he should be. That flies in the face of all precedent. Why would they—” Harry breaks off, breathing hard. _It’s not your place anymore_ , he reminds himself, clenching his teeth.

“See? I _knew_ you still cared,” Eggsy says fiercely. “You could come back. Be Arthur, it’s nothin’ but an armchair position anyway, Harry, and we need you, guv. We—”

“No.”

“But—”

Panic cinches a vice around his ribs. Strangles his words. “No. Do not ask me again.”

“Harry.” Incredulous.

“You can’t.” He can feel the trembling start in his wrists, shaking down through his fingers, the motion vibrating up his arms. He tenses, trying to quiet it, but it backfires and his shoulders shudder. “Don’t—” but that’s as far as he gets before his teeth begin to chatter. He can’t bloody _breathe_.

“All right, Harry. All right. It’s ok. I’m done. Swear down, Harry. I won’t bring it up again, ok?” Eggsy sounds suitably contrite and desperately worried as he lays himself down on top of Harry and covers him with his body.

The weight is comforting in a counter-intuitive way that Harry doesn’t understand, but that he also doesn’t fight. He lies still, sunk down into the mattress, the pressure grounding him in his body. He focuses on breathing. His rib cage expanding and contracting, rising and falling beneath Eggsy’s warm body. Eggsy is murmuring apologies into Harry’s ear, but Harry can’t really hear it over the susurration of blood rushing, pushing, pounding against his skull.

When the attack has passed and the shaking has subsided, Harry lifts his hands and sets them on Eggsy’s back. His head hurts, his mouth is dry.

“Eggsy, it’s all right,” Harry says, “I’m all right.”

“Fucking hell, Harry.” Eggsy still sounds frightened as he sits up, peering down at Harry like he’s worried he’ll break. “What do you need?”

“A glass of water wouldn’t go amiss,” Harry says, and Eggsy immediately hops off his lap to go fetch one.

When he comes back Harry is sitting up in bed with the lamp turned on. Eggsy hands him the glass and then kneels on the ground at his side, looking up at him with concern as he drains the glass.

“I really am ok,” Harry says gently, reaching down to cup Eggsy’s cheek. “It’s thoroughly humiliating to have you see me like that, but I suppose it illustrates my point better than words ever could. The man that I was, I’m not him anymore, Eggsy.”

Eggsy’s eyes slip shut and he turns into Harry’s touch, pressing a kiss to Harry’s palm, the inside of his wrist.

“If you came back,” Eggsy says, voice thick with some emotion Harry can’t parse. “If you came back we couldn’t be together, right?”

Harry nods.

“I would be your boss. It wouldn’t be fair to you, Eggsy. The power imbalance alone…I wouldn’t feel right.”

Eggsy nods, expression serious, as if he is turning Harry’s words over in his mind very carefully.

“But,” he says slowly, brow furrowed, “here. Here, I can have you, yeah? We can be together.”

Harry nods, his throat tight. “If that is what you want.”

Eggsy’s expression softens and he looks at Harry as if he’s daft. “Course. Course it’s what I want. _Harry_.”

“Then come here,” Harry says, unable to stop himself from beaming like an idiot. “Come here and let’s go to bed. I believe you wanted to know whether or not I snore and far be it from me to deny you such a simple pleasure.”

“You’re ridiculous, you know that?” Eggsy murmurs affectionately, rising and pressing a quick, hard kiss to Harry’s lips before clambering over Harry only to curl up directly behind him, knees tucked into Harry’s, arm around his waist, nose buried in the soft curling hairs at Harry’s nape.

 

**********

 

“Harry.”

Soft butterfly touches across his cheeks, fleeting brush-foot, gossamer caresses.

“Harry, wake up.”

Harry rolls toward the voice, reaching blindly with his arms to drag Eggsy in. He’s rewarded with an adorable huff of a laugh and a kiss, wet and deep and messy. Perfection.

“Come back to bed,” Harry pleads, clutching at Eggsy’s clothes—why is he clothed, that’s unacceptable—and tugs him down.

“I can’t. I’ve got to go. I’ve got a tyre to change before I head to the airport, ‘member?”

He tastes once more of mint, but gone are Harry’s scents. Now Eggsy smells only of himself, his shaving foam, his aftershave, the spice of his deodorant. Harry chases the smells down Eggsy’s body, arms slung around Eggsy’s hips, rubbing his face over the boy’s belly.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Eggsy says, stroking his hand over Harry’s head. “I promise.” 

“Bring a suit,” Harry says, cracking one eye open to look up at Eggsy.

“A suit?” Bemused.

“Yes. It’s my turn to take you out and if I can’t do it the way I’d like, at the finest restaurant in London, then we will make do with what we have. Bring a suit.”

“Yeah, ok. Whatever you say, you berk.”

“Come here.”

“Harry,” Eggsy remonstrates as Harry tries once more to pull him back under the covers. “If I do, I’ll never leave, hmm?” Harry interrupts him with his tongue and for a few blissful moments Harry thinks maybe he has convinced him. But all too soon Eggsy pulls back, out of range.

“Christ, Harry, I’m gonna be hard all the way to London now.”

“Apologies,” Harry says, not feeling sorry at all.

“I gotta go. No, no more kisses!” Eggsy exclaims as Harry reaches for him once more. Harry opens his eyes, prepared to pout, and watches as Eggsy slings his kit bag over his shoulder and backs away from Harry like he’s a predator who might leap at any moment. He looks outrageously good to Harry, pink cheeks, red lips, hard cock, mussed hair.

“Safe travels,” Harry says, hugging his pillow to his chest. A very poor substitute for what he really wants.

“You’re gonna have yourself a wank the second I walk out this door ain’t you?” Eggsy says, grinning, as he reaches the doorway.

“Perhaps.”

“You gonna think about me?”

Harry hums. “Maybe.”

“Maybe!”

“Go on then, give me something to think about.”

Eggsy arches an eyebrow at him. “Yeah? You think you can handle that?”

“Oh, my darling, I think I can.”

“We’ll see about that…”

Eggsy is across the space in seconds, mouth pressed to Harry’s ear. “You want to know what I’ll be thinking about when I’m up in the air, crammed into the toilet, with my cock in my hand?”

Harry  nods, his heart beginning to thud against his ribs, all his blood rushing south. Eggsy takes Harry’s hand and slides it underneath the duvet, sets it on top of Harry’s waistband suggestively before withdrawing.

“I’m gonna think about you opening me up until I’m nice and ready for you. Gonna think about your long fingers inside me. Gonna think about your mouth on my cock, sucking me so good, just like you did last night. You suck cock like a god, Harry. Fuck, I’m getting wet just thinking about your mouth. And there I’ll be, miles away, my fist on my cock, and I’ll be thinking about your lips and your hands and how you’ll take your time. How you’ll wait until I’m bloody begging for you to fuck me. How I’ll be fucking myself on three of your fingers tryin’ to prove to you that I can take it. I can Harry, I can take it. I’ll probably come like that, Harry, shoot come all over that tiny airplane loo, all over my hand, make a mess of myself just thinking about how good it’s gonna be when you’re finally inside me.”

When Eggsy pulls away, eyes glinting mischievously, Harry is panting, his hand wrapped around his erection through his pyjamas, stroking off. He comes like that with a quiet moan, ruining yet another pair of trousers in only so many hours, to the sound of Eggsy’s quiet command, “Fuck yeah Harry, come for me, _now_.”

He’s gone then, with a quick kiss and a smug smile thrown over his shoulder before he clatters down the stairs and slams the door behind him with a bang.

“Bugger,” Harry says to the empty bedroom, heart pounding, semen cooling, wrecked only by the sound of Eggsy’s voice in his ear.

What’s it to be like then, when he has Eggsy below him at last? Begging him in that low rumbly voice? Whining prettily for Harry’s cock?

 _Bugger_ , he thinks again, wiping his hand off on his shirt.

At this point Harry can only hope he’ll survive it.


	10. Chapter Ten

Harry is left alone once more and the silence has never been quite so deafening.

It is a presence inside the house, a corporeal, tangible thing, making up a buzzing space for itself inside Harry’s head.

He tries to run it off. Pound the beach and his body and his mind into submission.

He tries to sweat it off. In his tiny, dark, state-of-the-art gym with a well thumbed (though as still unread) copy of _Anna Karenina_ propped open before him on his stationary bike’s tray. He keeps it mostly for Vi’s notes in the margins; it was her favorite book. Her familiar messy scrawl is illegible in some places. Some where the pen bit through in vehemence, some where the words seem to disappear mid thought as the nib went dry. There are traces of meals eaten, of tears shed, of baths taken, of a text deeply interrogated and, ultimately, enjoyed, relished, savoured. The type is blurred here and there with evidence (red wine stains, greasy smears from the onion crisps she ate in bed at night, tea soaked sepia corners, the telltale wrinkles shaped like raindrops, biscuit crumbs still buried in the spine, inked fingerprint smudges). A palimpsest of her life. Harry wonders if her fingertips were stained with ink whenever she read it. Whether she carried the story with her on the whorls of her thumbs. Sometimes he thinks he can smell her perfume, a dark plummy scent that had reminded Harry of night blooming flowers and sex, wet and musky and heady-sweet, rising like a spectre from the pages.    

The silence is only thicker for want of her there.

He aches.

Tries to drink it off. Puddings of gin and cognac and whiskeys neat.

After a week all he has to show for it are blisters, hangovers, and a book he still can’t bring himself to read.

The only thing that helps are thoughts of Eggsy. On Sunday night, still sweating beneath his pyjamas after his evening bath, Harry closes his eyes and runs them all together in a long luminous stream.

Eggsy unkempt and never lovelier, passed out on his sofa. Incensed and stubborn in the rain, not letting Harry run away from him. What a stunning thing it had been to see the boy again. And this time his swagger real, his confidence in his body, in his ability, backed up by hard work and a place in the world. A purpose. Still the same, brash and bold, and yet, metamorphosed, transformed, like one of Harry’s beloved butterflies. Currying Harry into bed and cradling him in the nook of his body, using his hands and his voice to soothe Harry. It makes Harry think of the little girl, Daisy, of who must have been behind the tucking in, the brushing of teeth, the eating of veg back at Eggsy’s mother’s flat. Eggsy’s role as caretaker is comfortable. He slips it on effortlessly. Roasting a bird for Harry’s supper while Harry has a kip upstairs. Fixing Harry’s tea.

Eggsy on Harry’s sofa moaning around a spoonful of ice cream soaked in espresso like it was the best thing he’d tasted in years. Able to revel in pleasure in a way that Harry doesn’t allow himself to do, or at least had fallen out of the practice of long ago. Without realizing it, Harry had let himself settle in routine, into the surety of tried and true things that didn’t hold the possibility to disappoint. And there was Eggsy, so sure of his feelings, of Harry’s feelings, a new thing, full of the potential for both pain and joy, this temptation, this risk made material, when Harry had thought desire long gone dormant, this beautiful boy that Harry loved, knelt up over Harry begging him for a kiss.

Harry can think of a million reasons why he shouldn’t have. They still march stridently about his brain, looking down their noses at him in disapproval, tutting and shaking their heads.

But now there is the feeling of Eggsy’s mouth opening to the stroke of his tongue. Honey thick treacly moans pulled up from somewhere deep inside him. Now there is the knowledge of the way Eggsy’s skin blushes like sherbet wherever Harry trails his mouth, his hands. The way his pale creamy skin is flecked with freckles and beauty marks. The delightful way he was pared down to a single essential word when he was lost in feeling, chasing orgasm. Now there is the vision of Eggsy’s naked body, the cordons of muscle, the flex of tendons, the compact solidity of him, a delectation for Harry to taste and touch and explore. There is the tactile knowledge now of the different textures of Eggsy’s skin. The smooth ripple of his stomach, muscles bunching and softening in turn under Harry’s fingertips. The hard ridges of his collarbones, the cut glass hollow of his throat. The furred rolling dip of his navel. The tufts of blonde hair under his arms. The downy hair on the inside of his thighs, the dark brown hair on his shins that matches the springy coils that surround his cock. A beautiful cock, thick and proportionate, and a wonderful silken weight filling Harry’s mouth, his hand.

Harry could spend the next millennia learning the intricacies of him. Chasing freckles across the landscape of his body. Teasing sensation from each part to see how Eggsy would react. Where to linger, where to skirt. Was he ticklish? Did he like having his nipples sucked? His fingers? His ears? His toes?             

With a jolt that makes him open his eyes Harry realizes that for the first time in his life he has time to pursue this. To indulge in Eggsy, to enjoy him, learn him, please him, love him.

He closes his eyes again, his heart racing a little at the thought, and there is Vi.

Vi, as Harry will ever conjure her, sitting in a chair at their kitchen table, knee drawn up, chin resting on top, bathed in autumn’s cool translucent light, her favorite season. Her curly black hair a riot around her brown face, hand wrapped around her _Per Mare, Per Terram_ mug, looking at Harry with a loving, if exasperated, smile.

“Aren’t you the one always going on about weak chins? Get on with it already, Harry. _Jesus wept_.”

And that is how he is ushered off to sleep.

Monday he wakes up, checks Eggsy's schedule. There are two possible openings when the boy might come back. Harry pages through some cookbooks while he has his coffee and sets the menu, places his weekly grocery order, and puts on his trainers. He tucks earbuds into ears, takes music with him out onto the beach, drives the silence back.

Jesus wept, indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, thank you for reading and for all of your kind words <3 <3


	11. Chapter Eleven

It doesn’t go at all to plan.

At first Harry is motivated by the prospect of Eggsy’s return. He practices the meal he will make for their date until the steps are simple, second nature. He samples flights of wines from his cellar to pick which ones complement the flavours best. He practices trifles, sticky toffee pudding, tiramisu. None of which look quite as pretty as they should, but taste fine. He picks out his suit. There is a delightful, anticipatory current running through each task. An edging; pleasure deferred. He can feel it build beneath his skin, a low, electric thrumming.

And then, two weeks go by without a word. There is no safe way for them to communicate without Harry’s location being revealed. Eggsy’s schedule places him in Macedonia, in New York. Tai Pei. Annoyed, Harry orders an extra phone for Eggsy to take back with him while he waits.

Listless.

Alone in his house that clings to the edge of the world, his horizons swallowed by the sea and the sky.

The days bleed together, time a seamless, ceaseless thread of raveled minutes, an infinity of seconds unspooled.

Migraines multiply. He has a particularly terrible week where he is in bed more than out. The ingredients spoil; Harry bins them, rather than enjoy the meal they should have had together.

On Monday, three weeks and then some since Eggsy’s departure, Harry, fingers hesitating over the keys, does not add them again to his grocery order.

Resentment sits, caustic and hot, inside his chest. Burning.

Burning.  

Only shortly to be smothered by shame.

Harry knows the nature of Eggsy’s work. He knows it all too well. Who is he to feel disgruntled? It was not so long ago that he was the one being shuttled around the globe, solving the world’s problems.

Eggsy has no control over it. He will go where he is sent.

Just as Harry did.

Once.

The wild vacillation of emotions: angry, ashamed, resentful, jealous, self-pitying, lonely, makes Harry long for an amnesia dart.

By Monday afternoon he is fed up. He lies down after his bath, naked, on top of the covers, windows open to the salt breeze of a warm May day, and, as recourse to feeling anything else at all, takes a sleeping pill and escapes into oblivion.

It takes a kiss to pull him from his deep drowse.

Up, up.

Floating.

“Hey, sleeping beauty, you gonna wake up for me?”

Harry can’t seem to drag to his eyes open. His lids are weighted, cumbersome, fused.

The lips return to push against his, soft and coaxing and wet, and Harry’s blood surges up, a wave cresting, crashing, rolling through him, waking him up from the inside out, until he can raise his hands just high enough to set them to the bare skin of Eggsy’s thighs.

Bare.

Harry manages a high whine in the back of his throat, nudging his mouth up, plaintively.

Fingertips skating up the soft skin on the backs, trailing through the fine fair hair, and then down, hooking into the sweat damp crooks of his knees.

“There you are,” Eggsy says, kissing Harry with his eyes open. Blinking at Harry as Harry blinks at him. His eyes blue-green in the low light. “Hi.”

“‘ello,” Harry rasps, letting his eyes slip shut again as Eggsy kisses him sweetly. “You’re naked.”

“Mm, so’re you,” Eggsy concurs, saying, “Was gonna have a wash but then you looked so fucking good, just lying there, all beautiful, and I—” before slipping Harry his tongue, which makes Harry grab at his arse and haul him in. “Ah, ah, Harry, _nggnh_.”

For a while that is all the illuminating conversation they can come up with. Too busy are they with kisses.

Really, truly, spectacular kisses.

Kisses so deep and perfect that Harry almost forgets the misery of the last three weeks.

Almost.

“I missed you,” Harry whispers, the words bubbling up and out, the admission pushing out against his will. An ache from his throat to Eggsy's lips. Christ, does he sound as desperate as he feels?  

“Missed you too,” Eggsy says, and he tastes of horrible airplane coffee and cigarettes and smells stale, of body odor that isn’t his own and under that, his own musky unwashed skin, and Harry doesn’t care, doesn’t care. “It’s this wanker from MI6. I swear he’s doing his level best to see me bloody KIA and—” but no, no Harry doesn’t want to hear about that, so he just kisses Eggsy quiet. Kisses him until he’s lost the plot, kisses him until he’s making helpless little noises in the back of his throat that are sending Harry’s heart into a frenzy, kisses him until the acronym _KIA_ stops echoing tinnily in Harry’s mind.

“God, you feel so good,” Eggsy is mumbling, their lips bumping clumsily together, apart, together. Eggsy is holding his hips up and away and that’s ridiculous, Harry wants all of Eggsy to be touching every part of him. But when Harry tugs on Eggsy’s knees, tries to pull him down, Eggsy resists, laughing against Harry’s cheek. “Fuck, Harry, ‘m not gonna last if you do that.”

“How long do we have?” Harry asks, kissing the curve of Eggsy’s ear.

“Four days,” Eggsy says proudly, sitting up and trapping Harry’s insistent hands beneath his thighs, and _oh_.

Look at him.

Burnished in the bright afternoon sunlight streaming in through Harry’s open windows, his skin is gilt in gold. It breaks over his hair, turns it to butterscotch. His cock is standing up, curving towards his belly, flushed red and terribly urgent looking. All of Eggsy is clenched tight, held in check. His stomach muscles are bunched, his ribs heaving as he breathes, his nipples two tight furious beads, his biceps bulging as he fists his hands on the tops of his knees. He’s looking down at Harry, his eyes dark and intensely focused. He looks as if he could go off at the slightest passing breeze.

Harry wriggles his hands out from under Eggsy. Rests one of them on top of Eggsy’s hand on his knee, thumbs over the knuckle bones straining white through his skin. Eggsy follows the movement with his eyes, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. Harry raises his left hand and slowly, slowly, wraps it around Eggsy’s prick.

Eggsy’s breath leaves his lungs in a long keening moan.

“We have time,” Harry says, low, letting his fist drift up, the soft satiny foreskin pushed up into dark red folds over the head, and then smoothing back down so that the crown pops out, fat and already wet. Eggsy’s head drops back on his neck, eyes dropping shut, his hand opening and closing over Harry’s on his knee, holding on tight. A tether. An anchor.

“You can come now,” Harry says, watching Eggsy’s hips thrust the tiniest bit up, pushing into the tight clutch of Harry’s hand. “And then you can come later.” Harry lets him glide, lets his cock go to rub his palm over the head, smearing Eggsy’s precome from the throbbing, blood red slit into the cup of his hand to wet his way back down. “And then again after that.” And Eggsy, panting, collapses forward to crush his mouth to Harry’s, his hips moving, fucking Harry’s fist.

“I thought about you,” Eggsy says, breathless and beautiful, hands braced on the mattress either side of Harry’s head. “Thought about you constantly, Harry.”

“Yeah?” Harry asks, tightening his hold to squeeze around the fret of Eggsy’s frenulum, working down his shaft. “What did you think about?”

“How good you looked on the sofa,” Eggsy murmurs in the scant few centimeters that separates their mouths, breath feverish on Harry’s lips. “The way you kissed me, God Harry, thought about your fucking mouth a lot.”

“Mostly with your cock in it, no doubt,” Harry says, cupping the back of Eggsy’s neck to bring him down to his lips so that he swallows down the sound of Eggsy’s laugh, feels him shudder with pleasure, his hips rocking.

Eggsy pushes the next words into Harry’s throat. “Thought about getting you naked again. Didn’t get to appreciate it last time.” Moving back up to hover over Harry, half his mouth tugged up in a smitten smile. “You’re fucking fit, Harry, you know that?”

Harry hums rather than answer that, his hand sliding down to cup the flushed curve of Eggsy’s cheek, run his thumb over the swell of his bottom lip.

“What else?”

“Thought about what you’d taste like. Thought about sucking you off.” And because it seems apropros Harry slides his thumb into Eggsy’s mouth and moans as Eggsy closes his lips around it and _sucks_.

“Bloody hell,” he says, feeling a corresponding pull on his cock. Harry takes his hand off Eggsy briefly to rearrange them. Pulling Eggsy down to sit flush against Harry’s stomach, Harry’s cock behind him, slipping into the sweat-slick crack of Eggsy’s arse.

“You’re a genius,” Eggsy says, rubbing against him as Harry spits into his palm and returns it to Eggsy’s cock.

“Tell me,” Harry breathes, heart pounding, as Eggsy really starts to move, every thrust sending him pressing back against Harry’s prick, his cheeks clenching around him, slippery and tight.

“Thought about.” Eggsy’s mouth is slack, his eyes unfocused, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. “Thought about your fingers, Harry, Harry, _fuck_.”

“What about my fingers?” Harry asks, promptly sticking two fingers back into Eggsy’s mouth, effectively preventing him from answering. Eggsy sucks hard, cheeks hollowing, tongue rubbing against the pads, getting them absolutely sopping.

“Thought about you fingering me,” Eggsy says, wiping the drool from his cheeks with the back of his hand when Harry pulls them out, dripping into his own belly button as he slips his fingers down to where Eggsy’s grinding against him and presses.

Presses.

“Yeah,” Eggsy gasps, his face bright red, all of him held taut and shivering, “Yeah, Harry, _yes_.”

Harry circles, wetting the tight little furl of skin with Eggsy’s saliva, his own mouth flooding at the thought of pressing his mouth there, of discovering the taste of Eggsy there, of how Eggsy would open…

Open.

Open for Harry.

He’s a vision, perched above Harry, wet with sweat and sunlight. Utterly lovely in his abandonment. His fingertips are dug into Harry’s pecs, his prick hard and throbbing in Harry’s hand, his arse silky hot around the tips of Harry’s fingers, sinking down, taking them to the first knuckle and then rising, shakily, up onto his knees. Harry’s cock is dripping between his cheeks, precome slipping down to ease Harry’s way, so that he can dip deeper, can crook them right where Eggsy needs him.

“ _Harry_ ,” broken uttering, reverent pleading, “ _Harry_.”

Harry can tell the moment Eggsy’s going to come because his entire body goes tense, eyes shut tight, breath held, toes curled into the sheets, right before he explodes, crying out, body contracting over where he’s spilling over Harry’s hand, where he’s clenching tight, so fucking tight, around Harry’s fingers, his hands pressing Harry down into the bed with incredible force.

Eggsy is still getting his breath back, collapsed on top of Harry’s chest, as Harry thrusts frantically into the cleft of Eggsy’s arse, pushing Eggsy’s cheeks together with his hands to make a slick channel for him to fuck into, his balls brushing against the soft opening of Eggsy’s body, still wet from Harry’s fingers, and it doesn’t take long until he’s coming, coming, coming, making a mess of Eggsy’s lower back, his moans muffled into Eggsy’s neck.

“That was fucking ace,” Eggsy says a few blissful minutes later, smiling up at Harry while he plays with Harry’s chest hair.

Harry pushes Eggsy’s hand away from his nipples, it _tickles_ , but he can’t help but grin at Eggsy’s straightforward exuberance, at the way Eggsy says what he’s thinking without reticence or prevarication. “It was rather wasn’t it?”

“Knew it would be,” Eggsy says, raising himself up on one elbow to kiss Harry’s smile from his lips, slow and sweet.

Harry’s voice rumbles a little when he says, “You did, did you?”

“Yeah,” Eggsy says, bouncing up on his knees with an energy that Harry is long past feeling after a magnificent orgasm. He wants to burrow into the duvet with Eggsy and sleep for an age. “Always knew if you could get over my age, we’d be cracking together.”

Harry sighs as Eggsy clambers off the bed. “It’s not _your_ age that’s the problem, Eggsy.”

“Well, it ain’t yours either.” Eggsy says over his shoulder as he heads for Harry’s bathroom, completely starkers and absolutely glorious. “Glad we got that sorted. I need a wash. What’ve you got to eat for dinner?”

“I’ll come up with something,” Harry murmurs distractedly, thoroughly enjoying watching the boy walk away, the small of his back streaked with Harry’s come, his skin still blushed a rosy rosy pink, his hair adorably disheveled.

Harry lies like that a little while longer, bathed in the warm light and the languid sea breeze, surrounded by the scent of Eggsy, of sex and sweat soaked linen, and listens to the quiet patter of the shower, the crash of the waves, and the steady slowing beat of his own heart.


	12. Chapter Twelve

It is not the veal piccata that he had planned, but he supposes that Violet’s family recipe for spag bol, which Harry knows by heart and which he had been pining for, as one does for comfort food in times of melancholy self-pity, will do nicely for their supper.

He opens a bottle of red, a Barbera, and pours out two glasses, letting it breathe while he minces carrots, onions, celery, and garlic into neat colorful piles. He occasionally stirs the dutch oven, where the ground beef and pancetta are cooking. A memory hovering at the verge, of Vi in their flat, curls springing unruly from a ponytail to float around the thin stem of her neck, one bare foot braced against the inside of the knee opposite.

Eggsy comes in when all the ingredients have been added and the kitchen is thick with fragrant steam.

Harry is at the hob, stirring in the beef stock and wine, when Eggsy snakes an arm around his waist and rises briefly onto his toes to place a kiss to the back of Harry’s bent neck, before moving away. It sends a cascade of warmth unfurling down Harry’s spine, all the way down his body to flush in his toes, which curl against the wood floor.

Harry taps the spoon against the rim of the pot and then turns to regard the boy.

He is sitting on top of Harry’s kitchen table, legs swinging, dressed only in a pair of those tiny black trunks and a sleeveless white vest. His hair is still wet, gleaming brown and copper under the lights and he hasn’t shaved. There is a day’s worth of stubble darkening the square cut of his jaw, dusting his cheeks, and framing the cherry red pout of his lips. His eyes, fixed on Harry, are a deep, deep green.

He tastes again of Harry’s toothpaste, his tongue lush and cool in Harry’s mouth, still warm from tasting the rich, tangy sauce. 

“You taste fucking delicious,” Eggsy murmurs, sucking and kissing at Harry’s lips as if he is chasing the flavours before they dissipate. “Will it be ready soon?”

Harry shakes his head and pulls away to brush his mouth over the short bristly hairs on Eggsy’s chin, bright sparking static against his lips, making him tingle all over. “Two hours at the very least.” He dips lower and Eggsy accommodates him by tipping his head back and offering up his throat to Harry’s mouth like an offering. There is a rather delectable spot where his shoulder meets his neck that Harry has been meaning to attend to and so Harry settles there, sucking at the soft freckled skin, hard and harder, until Eggsy gasps and his knees clench tight, digging into Harry’s waist.

“We should make the pappardelle,” Harry says, pulling away reluctantly, the air in the kitchen flooding in between them, bracing and cold, as he steps back. Eggsy looks delightfully debauched, legs spread wide, lips swollen, cheeks pink, with a dark purplish mark on his skin, a brand in the shape of Harry’s mouth. It makes something fierce and hot and possessive burst inside Harry’s chest.

Jesus.

He turns, shaken, runs a hand through his hair, tightens the tie on his robe. He fetches the eggs from the fridge. Says, steady enough, “Eggsy, would you please get the flour, both the semolina and the all-purpose, and salt from the pantry?” and waits, chewing on his bottom lip, hand gripping the edge of the island.

“All right?” Eggsy asks, light, curious, when he comes back. Setting the ingredients down on the counter before sliding his hand into the small of Harry’s back, a warm weight through the terrycloth.

“Fine,” Harry says, with a tight smile, that even to him feels farcical. Eggsy’s gaze is hot on the side of his face as he drags the bags of flour over and spoons out a cup each into a soft white mound.

“Come here,” Harry says, stepping aside so that Eggsy can stand in front of the flours. Harry bends to get a mixing bowl from the cabinet and slides a wire whisk out of the ceramic pitcher he keeps his cooking implements in. Eggsy watches, patient and quiet, unnaturally so, as Harry whisks two eggs and four yolks together. Harry’s chest feels hollow, his heart rapping sharply at his ribs.

“A friend,” Harry starts to say to fill the awkward silence, but no, that’s not right. “Well, no, she was a, a,” Harry stammers. How does he explain what Violet was to him? Not a lover, more than a friend, most like a spouse, but even that still doesn’t quite fit. “She was my partner,” he says at last, but still feels like he needs to clarify. “Not, not in the sense of—”

And Eggsy, bless him, saves Harry from any more inelegant stumbling, “You loved her, yeah?”

“Yes,” Harry says, gratefully, smiling down at him. “Yes, I did. Thank you.”

Eggsy shrugs. “It’s like me and Rox, innit? I don’t want to fuck her, but I love her more than most. She’s family.”

Harry nods, a hard knot lodged in his windpipe. He speaks around it, voice thick. “That is it exactly. Her name was Violet. And the mews, that was our home together.”

Eggsy nods, solemn. “What happened to her?”

“She died.” Harry can feel goosebumps break out down his arms. He still isn’t used to it, even twenty years on. “Of breast cancer.”

Eggsy nods again. “Me gran had it too. In her lungs. She died when I was seventeen.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry says, cupping Eggsy’s elbow and squeezing it gently.

“It’s all right,” Eggsy says, and if their eyes shine a little brighter and they’re both blinking a little more rapidly than usual when they turn back to the counter, well, what is it to anyone else?

“She used to make this,” Harry explains as he shows Eggsy how to carve a well in the center of the flour before he pours in the eggs and salt. “Her mother’s side were from Oxfordshire, with an Italian grandmother somewhere down the line. Vi said that was where the recipe came from. Her father was second generation, grew up in Brixton, but his grandparents immigrated from the Caribbean in the 50’s.” Moving around behind him, his body pressed close against Eggsy’s, knees bent, chin tucked over his shoulder, Harry guides Eggsy’s hands to fold the eggs gently into the flour.

It’s only natural, it’s simple physics really, that when Eggsy turns his face to nuzzle Harry’s cheek with the tip of his nose, that Harry, drawn by some magnetic force, has to turn as well. Their hands continue to knead the soft dough, their fingers tangled together, while they kiss, soft and then, softer still. Harry feels drugged, lost in Eggsy. In the sweet way he licks gently into Harry’s mouth, in the way he is always saying Harry’s name, as if it’s the only thing he can properly remember, in the way he turns in the circle of Harry’s arms to press sticky fingertips to Harry’s cheeks, in the way he’s already hard and rutting purposefully, mindlessly, against Harry’s stomach.

“Let me,” Harry says between kisses. “Let me wrap the dough up, Eggsy, Eggsy, let me. Just.”

“Ok,” Eggsy says, dazed, sidling down the counter’s edge to give Harry room to wash his hands, to wrap the dough in saran wrap and set it aside, before he slides both arms around Eggsy and then promptly bends him in half as he recaptures his mouth. They stumble back, blind, until Eggsy’s arse hits the table’s edge and he grunts. Harry lifts him and sets him down on top, never breaking from the kiss.

Eggsy’s fingers are still coated in flour and he makes a mess of Harry’s robe as he rips it off Harry’s shoulders impatiently, dragging down Harry’s back to grab his arse and pull him closer. He’s moaning, his body writhing, as Harry works Eggsy’s shirt off, and then kisses his way down Eggsy's throat. Rolling Eggsy’s nipples against his tongue, he feels Eggsy’s thighs flex against his sides as his heels dig into Harry’s lower back, his hands wrapped tight around the back of Harry’s head. Encouraged, Harry noses into Eggsy’s belly button and down the trail of silky dark hair to the waistband of Eggsy’s tight black pants.

“These,” Harry says into the skin of Eggsy’s belly, hooking his fingers underneath the elastic band and tugging so that he can touch his lips to Eggsy’s femoral pulse, let it thud, hard and quick, against his tongue, “are outrageous,” sliding the pants down to the tops of Eggsy’s thighs to let his cock spring free. “How am I meant to keep my hands from you? To get anything at all done when you are prancing around in these?” he says before burying his face in the coarse wheat colored curls leading him south.

“I don’ prance,” Eggsy slurs, charmingly offended, as Harry kneels on the ground and pulls Eggsy forward until his arse is hanging just slightly off the table, his knees slung over Harry’s shoulders, spread open.

“Harry.”

Harry looks up the flushed splay of Eggsy’s body on the table top, resplendent in languor, in imminent pleasure, in joy. The look in his eyes is inexplicably fragile.

“I—” Eggsy breaks off, eyes blinking up to the ceiling. Harry’s heart kicks in his chest, was he about to…

“What is it, my boy?” Harry asks, as Eggsy reaches down to rub his thumb over Harry’s cheek. He turns his face into the touch and presses his lips to the soft white skin of his wrist.

“Nothing,” Eggsy says, shaking his head and swallowing thickly. “Nothing.”

“Then,” Harry says, heart still skipping a bit, his thumbs hooking underneath Eggsy’s knees to push them up, “will you hold these for me, please?”

“Yeah. Fuck,” Eggsy says, replacing Harry’s hands with his own, opening himself further, letting Harry see every part of him. Every secret place. Vulnerable and trusting. It makes the back of Harry’s throat burn as he leans in and kisses Eggsy’s tender dark wrinkled skin.

“Hhhhnnnnn,” Eggsy groans through his nose, going tight against Harry’s mouth, pinching shut, tense, taut, resisting, before Eggsy lets go the breath he was holding and his whole body rushes down to push flush against Harry’s lips in surrender.

Harry licks him. In broad strokes. Up the seam to suck at his perineum, onto the fuzzy rolling weights of his bollocks, scratchy against Harry’s tongue. Then back down to the knot of him, relentless, working at his rim and the short crackly hairs in the crack of his arse, until he can feel when the muscle starts to loosen. When Eggsy’s body gives itself over to sensation and relaxes completely into Harry’s touch.

The moment Harry’s tongue slips inside the hot silken grip of Eggsy’s body they both moan. Both of them cracked open at the feeling. Eggsy pushing himself down onto Harry’s tongue, Harry pressing closer, trying to get deeper, deeper, trying to get deep enough.

Harry can sense Eggsy edging closer, his arse clenching rhythmically around Harry’s tongue, and when Harry looks up he’s met with a beautiful picture. Eggsy’s legs spread wide, hovering in the air, toes curled, head thrown back, and both of his hands wrapped tight around his cock, stroking it slow, slow, slow, the crown slick and bruised looking above his fist.

Harry redoubles his efforts and buries his face between Eggsy’s cheeks. Licks him wet and messy all over, eats Eggsy’s arse like he’s starving for it, licking, sucking, kissing, licking, sucking, kissing, sucking, sucking, sucking, right before he slides his tongue back inside and fucks him quick and hard with the sharp tip.

“ _Harrrryyy_ ,” Eggsy gasps and comes, his arse closing like a vice around Harry’s tongue, milking it, like he would milk Harry’s cock, like he will, he will, he will. Eggsy’s whole body is trembling uncontrollably as Harry rises, wiping his mouth and the come streaks on Eggsy’s stomach and chest with his discarded robe, before he lays himself over Eggsy, pressing his ear to the rapid race of his heart in the center of his chest.

“Come ‘ere,” Eggsy whispers, pulling on Harry’s shoulders. “Kiss me. Harry. Kiss me.”

So Harry does.

Kisses him with the musky earthy taste of Eggsy’s most private skin still in his mouth. Kisses him with all the love he feels, overflowing, run rampant, and he thinks it must be so obvious. How far gone he is. The words are there, wanting to break free, but it feels too soon. He thinks of Eggsy and what he had started to say and how fragile he had looked. Harry doesn’t want to say it in the heat and fury of sex. He wants Eggsy to know he means it.

Just then, as Harry is trying to kiss Eggsy just a little less desperately, Eggsy’s stomach growls and they break apart laughing and are eased into a new space, one less fraught, less urgent.

“I suppose it’s time to finish the pasta,” Harry says, straightening up and smiling down at Eggsy. He holds out his hand and Eggsy takes it, pulling himself to sitting. He doesn't let go, but kisses Harry’s knuckles and rubs his forehead over them, looking up at Harry through his fringe with his eyes rounded into half moons and Harry loves him. Loves him.

Loves him utterly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more before I head out on vacation to see a wonderful amazing friend that I met through fandom and who I now get to love on IRL! Fandom is the best. I'll be gone for a little while and probably unable to post until late next week.
> 
> Commenters! You guys have my heart. Thank you for encouraging me and sharing your thoughts with me. It means the world. And to whoever it was who recc'd this fic somewhere out there in the ether, I got a lot of new readers all at once, so thank you whoever you are. I'm not on Tumblr anymore so can't track those sorts of things. And to everyone else, thank you, thank you for following along. <3 <3 <3


	13. Chapter Thirteen

“You’re going to get my sheets all sticky,” Harry complains, but only half-heartedly, as Eggsy peels his third clementine.

“Too late for that, guv,” Eggsy says, discarding the rind into the bowl sitting beside them on the bed. “We fucked earlier, ‘member?”

“I seem to recall something of the sort,” Harry murmurs, stroking his thumbs over the taut drums of Eggsy’s thighs, enjoying the way Eggsy shivers infinitessimally each time he does it. “But maybe you’d do me a favor, and remind me?”

“Christ, Harry, you’re insatiable.”

Harry nods, bending his knees so that Eggsy tips forward, sliding down Harry’s thighs, until he is in range of Harry’s lips.

He tastes of citrus, makes Harry’s cheeks draw in, lips puckering, bright and sour on his tongue. Eggsy’s lips, syrupy sweet, stick to Harry’s as he sucks the juice from them.

“Hold up,” Eggsy says, voice low and thick, sitting up and out of range. “Harry, hold on. Let me finish me orange first. Jesus.”

Harry relents, if only for the pleasure of watching Eggsy above him. The boy likes sitting in Harry’s lap and Harry wouldn’t dream of dissuading him. He quite likes the weight of Eggsy leaning back against his thighs, his back smooth and warm against Harry’s skin. He likes watching the way Eggsy’s eyes crinkle up, smiling down at him as he chews. He especially likes when Eggsy reaches down to press the pads of his fingers to Harry’s lips when he has placed the last slice in his mouth, the sticky catch of them as he draws them side to side, the bittersweet taste when Harry licks them, sucks them just inside and watches as Eggsy’s eyes grow darker.

And darker.

“All right,” Eggsy says at last. Picking up the bowl and leaning over to deposit it onto the bedside table. Harry holds onto Eggsy’s hips to steady him and then trails them up his sides as he settles once more astride Harry.

Leaning down over him, forearms pressed into the mattress, hands sliding beneath Harry’s pillows. He’s close enough that Harry goes fairly cross-eyed looking at him and Eggsy pulls back, propping himself up higher on his right elbow so that they can look at each other properly.

His voice has dropped an octave, comes out deep and husky when he says, “I like you, Harry.” Blinking. Serious. Amends, “I _like_ like you. I’m mad for you.”

And, oh.

Harry’s heart is beating in his throat. _Loveloveloveyou_ swallowed down. The words scrape up like sandpaper, his voice roughed up and hoarse, “I like like you too. Eggsy, my dear, I _adore_ you.”

“Yeah?” Disbelieving. Eyebrows rising.

“Yes,” Harry breathes, running his hands up Eggsy’s back to cup the arc of his ribs, fit his fingers into the notches, feel the breath fill him.

“The way you look at me. Fuck.” Eggsy shakes his head, a blush staining his cheeks. “You look at me like I’m the best thing you’ve ever seen. Harry.”

“You are. Eggsy. You _are_.”

Eggsy’s smile is crooked. His eyes searching Harry’s. His brow knit in the center. “You don’t have to prove it to me, you know. You don’t have to suck my cock every time I get a stiffy. I’m half-hard all the time when I’m with you. It’s pretty much a permanent condition, innit? I want to take care of you too. Want to make you feel so good, Harry. Will you let me?”

“You do. Eggsy, you do, I—” Harry stammers, wondering how they had gotten their wires crossed. Wondering what he has to say to make Eggsy believe him.

“Shhh,” Eggsy soothes. “I just.” He stops. Sinks his teeth into his bottom lip. Worries it. “Just let me touch you, yeah? I want to. I want to learn what you like.”

“I like _you_. Eggsy—”

“Harry, Christ, just say ok.” Rubbing their noses together, exasperated, his laugh puffs against Harry’s lips.

Blood pounding hard against the thin walls of his veins, Harry swallows against the heartbeat in his throat. “Ok.”

“Good.”

Eggsy kisses him, but it’s too brief. Harry arches up after him to follow, but Eggsy slowly pushes himself up onto his knees and then he’s shifting down, to the end of the bed, sitting cross legged in between Harry’s legs.

“You don’t have much practice giving up control, huh?”

“I don’t have any idea what you mean,” Harry says with a straight face, tucking his chin into his chest to look down the length of his body at him.

Eggsy chuckles, picking up Harry’s left foot and dragging it into his lap. Harry stretches out his toes and brushes them over the peak of Eggsy’s nipple, which is just within reach.

“Harry,” Eggsy says, leveling him with a look, “that’s cheating. Now, please, behave.”

Harry lets Eggsy pull his foot back into place. Lets him run his thumb from Harry’s heel, into the curve of his arch, to rub at the ball. Watching Harry closely as Harry’s toes curl reflexively around his hand.

“My feet aren’t that sensitive,” Harry admits, resting his hands on his stomach as Eggsy sets the sole of his foot against his chest to cup Harry’s ankle.

Eggsy’s palm is hot against Harry’s skin, moving up the back of his calf, making Harry’s leg hair stand on end in it’s wake. It makes Harry prickle all over. Makes his diaphragm rise high and tight. He squirms, pressing into the touch.

Says, slightly breathless, “I should also say, in deference to honesty and all, that I’m not entirely sure I’ll be able to come again.”  

Eggsy shakes his head. “You don’t have to get hard and you don’t have to come, but I want to make you feel good, hmm? I like looking at you. I like touching you. Does it feel alright?”

Harry swallows. The bloody understatement of the year. “Yes.”

“Good. Now relax.”

Harry closes his eyes. He breathes.

When Eggsy had been gone Harry had thought about this countless, countless times. Having Eggsy in his bed. All the things Harry wanted to do to him. How he had wanted to spread Eggsy out on the sheets and kiss every freckle, every mole. How he had wanted to finger him and fuck him and suck him and make him come and come and come. He had dreamed about Eggsy’s lips, his beautiful cock, his eyes, his skin like a sunrise flush under Harry’s hands. He thought about Eggsy curled up in his arms, he thought about how it had felt to be curled up in Eggsy’s. He had thought about all the myriad ways he could find to please Eggsy.

But Eggsy is a constant surprise. In his past relationships Harry had been the one who pursued, who worshipped, who took care of. He was finding, much to his confoundment, that he was enjoying being on the opposite end of that dynamic now and again. He liked being seen to, to being taken care of. To being in a partnership that felt equal in terms of give and take, despite it’s inherent inequalities in age and experience. Eggsy is generous in a way that Luca and Jae-hee hadn’t been. It startles Harry to find that it is something he needed, but was never met by his lovers, something he made excuses for without realizing it. Something he hasn’t felt since Vi passed.

That feeling of comfort. Of letting one’s hair down. Of safety and hearthfire and intimacy and.

 _Home_.

The realization is both crushing and a relief at once. His lungs feel simultaneously cinched and thrown open at the same time. He tries to breathe and does it poorly.

Harry opens his eyes.

And there he is.

Knelt up on his knees, sliding Harry’s leg up and over his shoulder, kissing the inside of Harry’s knee, his warm hand cupping Harry’s thigh as he moves forward.

“I love the way you smell,” he is saying, soft and rumbly, dragging his lips and his stubble up the inside of Harry’s leg and making him tingle all over. Murmuring into Harry’s skin until he reaches the hem of Harry’s boxers.  

Fingers tucked into the waistband Eggsy looks up at Harry. “Can I?” And then tugs when Harry nods, lifting his hips.

His cock is still mostly soft, lying against his stomach, but Harry doesn’t have time to be embarrassed, because Eggsy doesn’t hesitate. Just leans in and runs his nose up the silky loose foreskin, pressing soft kisses to where the head is still hidden inside it’s folds.

“You smell bloody amazing,” Eggsy says, rooting around in Harry’s pubic hair, breathing deep, “God.” Running his open mouth, his hot breath, the bright burn of his stubble, over Harry’s bollocks and then down the inside of Harry’s thigh once more. A scrape of teeth that has Harry arching off the bed, his hand falling onto Eggsy’s head, fingers winding up in the soft strands of his hair, tight, tight, tight.

“Your thighs are plenty sensitive,” Eggsy says, his hands cupping Harry’s hips before he sinks his teeth into Harry’s skin, pushes his tongue to the blaze of the bite, and sucks.

Harry moans.

“Where else?” Eggsy asks, pulling off a moment later, his hair a mess, his eye’s lit and glowing.

“My neck,” Harry gasps. “My ears.”

“Fuck yes,” Eggsy says, clambering the rest of the way up Harry’s body eagerly.   

His weight settles down on top of Harry, lying between Harry’s legs and Harry clutches at him restlessly. Palming at the lush round curves of his arse through his pants, at the hard musculature of his back, at the smooth marble of his shoulders, as Eggsy rubs the rough edges of his mouth along Harry’s jaw, sending a cascade of sparks snapping through him, making him whine and writhe.

He wraps his legs around Eggsy’s thighs, rubs his feet up his calves to feel the crackle of his hair, awash in sensation.

“God, I wanna fuck you so bad,” Eggsy whispers, his mouth making wet sucking noises against Harry’s throat as he works his way up to Harry’s ear. “Harry, you don’t even know what you look like right now. Fucking gorgeous.”

The stone ground grate of his voice fed directly into Harry’s ear coupled with the push of Eggsy’s tongue inside, the sharp nick of his teeth on his earlobe, the suckle of his mouth following soon after drives Harry crazy. His skin feels too tight on his bones, his blood hammering through him, heart pounding in his chest.

“Do it,” he finds himself begging. “Do it, Eggsy. Fuck me.”

“Harry,” Eggsy sounds doubtful. “It’s ok, we can, just like this, just let me—”

And then he is pushing his pants down and Harry helps. Hooks them with his feet and shoves them down towards the foot of the bed.

“Eggsy, Eggsy, I want you to,” Harry says when Eggsy rises up onto his hands, braced above Harry, lovely in streaks of golden lamp light and shadow.

Eggsy sits up all the way and they both look down at where Harry’s cock is valiantly trying for half mast, the poor bugger. Eggsy reaches down and takes him in his hand, making Harry curl in instinctively, before he falls back down onto his pillows, breathing hard.

“Fuck.”

“Your skin’s so soft,” Eggsy whispers, stroking Harry slow and sweet and gentle. “Love that you’re gettin’ hard for me.”

Eggsy is hard, again; he needs no careful coaxing like Harry.

“I don’t know,” Harry says, cheeks hot. “I’m not sure if I—”

But Eggsy shushes him again. Leans down to press his lips to Harry’s while he moves his hand over Harry down below. Pulling his foreskin down to rub his thumb over Harry’s crown in small circles. Small tremors radiate out through Harry’s navel, spiraling out from where Eggsy is touching him. They shiver out through his limbs, warm waves of sunlight, making him tremble.

“You don’t have to do nothin’ but feel it, ok?” he murmurs, mouth moving against Harry’s. “Does it feel good?”

“Yes,” Harry says, pushing his hips up in emphasis, his blood swelling, like a tide coming in, slowly plumping up inside Eggsy’s loose fist.

“Good,” Eggsy says, rocking down against Harry’s hip, leaving wet streaks of pre-come on Harry’s skin. “I could come just like this. Just feeling you get hard in my hand. I think I’m goin’ to soon. God, Harry. Harry, _oh—_ ”

Harry wraps his hand around Eggsy, giving him something to thrust into. Feels the beat of his blood pulse against his palm, growing hot and hotter, as his pace increases.

“I want you,” Harry babbles, incoherent, overwhelmed, “want you inside me when you come, please, Eggsy, please.”

“But—” Eggsy starts to protest.

“No, it’s ok. I—” Harry licks his lips, and lets go of Eggsy’s prick to cup his face. “Even if I don’t. It will feel good. So good. I want you to. Please.”

“You sure?” Eggsy is peering down at him quizzically.

“Yes,” Harry says, unequivocal. He wants this.

“You got, you know, lube an' shit?”

“The bathroom. Bottom drawer on the right.”

“Yeah, ok, alright.” Eggsy is nodding, but he still looks unsure. “You know I’m happy just like this right? You’re not doing this because—”

“No, no. I want you to. I promise.” Harry closes his hand around him again, strokes once, up and down, and Eggsy’s eyes flutter shut and he melts down to press his forehead to Harry’s.

“You play dirty, Harry Hart.”

“Just pressing my advantage,” Harry says innocently, kissing him anything but.

Eggsy groans and opens to Harry, tangling his fingers in Harry’s hair, and licking in deep.

“Fuck, ok. I’ll be right back."

Harry turns on his side and hugs his pillow, watching Eggsy stumble to the bathroom, his cock standing out, proud and dark red, as he disappears inside.

Harry glances down his body to where his own cock lies, half full against his thigh, and sighs.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

The night settles softly around them. Enveloping them, cocooning, cotton-thick and hushed. Harry’s bedroom, with it’s blue damask wallpaper, cinnamon hued antique furniture, and his large four poster bed, is still, nothing stirs. Outside, the light is thin and waning, the white sun sinking in a pearl gray sky. This far north, it won’t properly set for another hour and a half or so. It is somehow only eight o’clock. They had come directly upstairs after dinner, bypassing pudding in favor of clementines and bed.

It feels like they are the only two people in the world. Nestled against Harry’s soft sheets, bathed in the warm, aureate glow of Harry’s bedside lamps, they lie facing each other.  

Harry’s gaze traces lovingly over Eggsy. Bronze and umber, ocher and fawn, he is a sun god forged from light. His eyes are hazel, chips of amber clouding the green, and his brow is furrowed in concentration as he fiddles with the lid on the lube, which sticks.

Harry leans in and brushes his lips over the crinkles between Eggsy’s eyes, sweeps them over to the scar that cuts through his left eyebrow, a bolt of white striking through the brown. He kisses down, feeling the flicker of Eggsy’s lashes, the downy hairs on his cheek fizzing against Harry’s lips. Eggsy’s hands still between them as Harry shifts closer, winding his arm around Eggsy’s waist and resting his hand in the small of his back. Their knees knock together, clumsy, before their legs tangle and twist. Eggsy’s mouth tips up to meet Harry’s, wet and soft and open.

“Fucking love kissing you,” Eggsy whispers, wriggling closer, until the bottle is pressed between their chests, momentarily forgotten.

“Do you?” Grinning. Harry’s giddy heart skipping about. It’s ridiculous really, but Harry frankly doesn’t give a toss.

“Mm, love it when you go all dimply on me too.” Eggsy noses over to where Harry’s cheeks are creased from smiling. “You get these lines, right here. Dunno, they’re not quite dimples, but, God, I want to bite ‘em, kiss ‘em, every time I see ‘em. They’re lovely.”

“That tickles. Mm.” Harry squirms. “Stop nibbling on my bloody cheeks and come back down here. A little lower, yes, yes, that’s good.”

Eggsy’s fingertips smell faintly of citrus as they sketch down Harry’s jaw, but his mouth tastes of nothing but himself. Wonderful.

“And your eyes.”  

“Oh, bloody hell.”

“Your eyes are so sad sometimes, Harry. Are you sad?”

“Not right now.”

“And you’ve got the most expressive chin I’ve ever seen.”

Harry pulls back. Not far. Just far enough for Eggsy to see the incredulous look on his face as he thumbs gently at Harry’s cleft. “My...chin.”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s mostly your mouth really, but I can always tell how you’re feeling by what your chin’s doin’.”

Harry snorts. “That’s the most outlandish, nonsensical thing I’ve ever heard. Your pillow talk is atrocious. Now, are you going to fuck me or not?”

Eggsy’s giggle is more adorable than it has any right to be and Harry leans in to kiss him, just to feel it bubble against his lips.

“All right, dimples, all right. Let me just find the lube.” Eggsy fishes around blindly between them for the bottle, still kissing Harry, off center.

“That is an entirely preposterous nickname,” Harry growls. “I don’t even have proper dimples. I suppose I shall have to call you freckle then, and _ah ah—_ ”

The lube is cold.  

It knocks the breath out of him slightly, the chill lancing through him.

“Give it a mo’,” Eggsy says, quiet, rubbing gently. Harry shifts, acclimating, sliding his knee over Eggsy’s hip and hooking it into the divot of his waist, giving Eggsy more room to work.

“You know, you haven’t said,” Eggsy says, the words muffled, his lips against Harry’s throat.

“Haven’t said what?” Harry asks, fingers threaded through Eggsy’s hair as Eggsy’s fingers circle down below. His mouth moves over the column of Harry’s throat, slick, sucking lazy kisses into Harry’s skin, his stubble burning at the perimeter, bright and hot, making Harry shiver.

“What’d you think about, while I was away?”

Answers crowd his mind, but none of them are the one Eggsy wants.

_I am afraid I am becoming my father. Drunk by 4pm, fixing supper in my slippers, alone. Do you know he died at the age of 59? A neighbor found him decomposing in his garden, felled by a heart attack while he was pruning his roses. The silence is my adversary, but none of my skills are applicable in the war we wage. It is a foe I cannot defeat, nor tame, nor kill, nor outwit. I suspect I will need to make friends with him, but I am not yet ready to concede. I fear what may happen if I do. Last week, I binned all of my clocks that ticked. I walk for miles and arrive nowhere. The emptiness of my horizons feels like retribution, my sequestration a penance. For what, I cannot tell. The sea, the sky, the land, they crush me between. I feel a lad again, unmoored and small. My maxims no longer apply. What use are manners if there is no one here but me? Indeed, what use a gentleman’s code when there is no one left for me to become? Should I continue as I did before, laying the table, dressing well, when none of it will matter in the end? I take too many baths, I drink too much, I sleep and sleep. I talk to a ghost sometimes. Through a book I summon her, but I can’t bring myself to read it. If I do, I know, somehow, I will lose her. And you. I think about you constantly. I think about reasons I might endeavor to keep you here. To convince you to stay with me. But it would be akin to putting you in a cage and I can’t bring myself to do it, though I am utterly desperate for you._

_I am really quite afraid I might be going mad._

Harry says none of these things. Instead he runs the tips of his fingers down the seam of Eggsy’s spine and then runs them back up. Relishes the catch of Eggsy’s breath and the push of his body as he arches into Harry, pressing all his warm skin into him, his cock slotting in, hot and silky, against Harry’s hip. He buries his nose in the boy’s soft hair, sets his lips to the velvet lobe of his ear.

Whispers, “I thought about the sounds that you make. About the sweet way you moan for me.”

The tips of two fingers pressing in.

“Fuck you’re tight,” Eggsy gasps, his toes curling against Harry’s shin, and then, then, how clever he is, he moans for Harry, as Harry rocks forward, pushing down, taking them two at once, to the second knuckle.

Eggsy turns his head to pant into Harry’s mouth, pushing his fingers deeper.

“Keep. Keep talkin’. Harry, love, _oh_.” Shuddering and making the loveliest sound in the back of his throat, helpless, as Harry moves his hips just so that their cocks rub together.

“Yes, that’s a particular favorite, that noise right there,” Harry says, rocking them together, their foreheads pressed tight, their noses brushing. “Just think of how tight I’m going to be around your cock, my dear, my darling. Just think how it will feel when I’m wrapped around you, how good it will be when you’re inside.”

The sound Eggsy makes then is broken, a series of staccato breaths, as they watch their cocks slip against each other, the heads leaving sticky, gleaming trails on Harry’s belly.

Harry doesn’t stop, not even when Eggsy pulls his fingers out to wet them with more lube. “I want to hear that groan you make right at the end, when you haven’t any language left, when you’re coming. You’re beautiful in rapture, Eggsy, you lose yourself so completely in it, it is a marvel to see. While you were gone I imagined countless ways to make you come, just so that I could hear that sound again and again.”   

“ _Harry_ ,” breathless.

“Yes.”

“ _Harry_ ,” cracked and urgent, a plea.

They are pressed so close Harry can feel the heavy thump of Eggsy’s heart in his chest.

“Yes, pet, what do you need?”

Circling.

Rubbing.

The pads of Eggsy’s fingers are sopping and the loud squelch they make when they push once more inside Harry is lewd. Obscene. But they crook up, pressing down onto that ember buried deep inside Harry that pulses and aches, and Harry can’t care, can’t care one wit.

“I’ll tell you what I need then, shall I?” His voice husks, a deep rasp.

Eggsy nods, licking his lips, and Harry kisses the strawberry stain on his cheeks, nuzzling down once more to speak into his ear.

“I need to hear that sound, Eggsy. I need to hear it tumble from your lips while you’re inside me.” Harry wraps a hand around Eggsy’s prick. “Want to hear it when you’re fucking me. When you’re so deep. _Eggsy_.” Holds it steady while Eggsy pulls out his fingers abruptly and reaches over Harry’s head to where they had left a condom on his pillow, before he rolls it on with shaking hands. “I’m afraid I need your cock rather badly.”

“Harry, fucking hell, kiss me,” trembling, voice rough and needy, as he rolls Harry over onto his back and bends down.

The kiss is deep and perfect. They were made for this. Crafted to fit, a perfect match. Eggsy offers up moan after luscious moan, his impetuous tongue pushing into Harry’s mouth as if he is intent on plundering every inch. Harry hooks his heels behind Eggsy’s thighs and holds on. His hands cupping the sharp edges of Eggsy’s shoulder blades. Fingers dipping into the groove of his spine, wet with sweat. Harry wants to turn him over, set his tongue there, to taste the salty slick taste of him. _Another time_ , he thinks, slipping down to part Eggsy’s full, plump cheeks and pull him down.

“Fuck me,” Harry begs and he is rewarded with a new sound, almost a growl, guttural and low, as Eggsy sits up and takes his cock in hand.

He’s a vision of debauchery. His hair standing up in wild disarray, he is flushed from his thighs to his ears and flecked with ink black stars. They are slightly raised, Harry knows, from brushing his lips over them, their texture slightly brusquer. Harry palms a quartet on Eggsy’s ribcage, thumbs at the bead of his nipple, drinks him in. Eggsy’s lips are swollen, his eyes black with pupil, and his cock is a dark wine red beneath it’s latex sheath.

Harry gets his other hand wet with lube and then wraps it around Eggsy once more. He can’t help it, he has to touch him. Has to watch Eggsy’s eyes slip closed in what looks like ecstasy, watch his red lips part on shallow breaths, watch his hands float down to anchor on Harry’s thighs, which spread for him, slipping wide in anticipation, in eager welcome.

Harry gives him a few more strokes before guiding him forward. Eggsy’s hands move up to cup Harry’s hips, his eyes, beneath their spray of lashes, trained on where the thick head of his cock is pressing against Harry’s rim.

“Ready?” he whispers, eyes flicking up to meet Harry’s, to collect his consent, which is endearing, it’s sweet really, toothsome almost, but entirely unnecessary, before he pushes inside.

Harry shuts his eyes. Fists his hands in the sheets. Bites back the urge to whine like a tart for more.

“God, look at you,” Eggsy murmurs, voice awed, sliding in and out, until his glans just catches against Harry’s opening, so that Harry feels the burn of the stretch and the glorious thickness of Eggsy’s cock, before pressing slowly back in. In. In. To the root. Pulls Harry closer, tugging him up onto his thighs, fingers tucking into the back of Harry’s knees, holding him open.

Open.

Open for his cock.

Fucking in deep, relentlessly slow, until Harry is the one making noises. Vulnerable, bitten off sounds of supplication that make his cheeks thud with blood.

“‘S alright?” Eggsy slurs, and Harry blinks at him dizzily. Eggsy glances down to where Harry is hard, curving against his stomach and Harry clutches at Eggsy’s hands, pulls them up and over his head so that Eggsy collapses on top of him, still buried inside. Eggsy presses Harry’s hands down into the bed, stretches him out taut below him, and moves his hips sharply. Harry gasps.

It borders on painful. But only just. Each time Eggsy pounds in, really moving now, fucking Harry hard and deep, licking at Harry’s mouth, kissing him sloppy and wet, there is a sharp rapport cracking up Harry’s spine to burst hot behind his eyes. It rings out through him, a bell struck vibration. He can feel, acutely, every hair on Eggsy’s belly as it rubs against the over-sensitive head of his cock. He prickles and smarts. He burns.

It makes him delirious with sensation, wanting more and less at once, chasing an orgasm that keeps slithering maddeningly out of reach. He is held, constantly suspended on the brink, his body a throbbing mass of sparking, spitting, misfiring nerves.

“Har-ry,” and there it is, the prelude to the sound that Harry has been seeking. Eggsy buries his face in Harry’s neck, feeds his moan into Harry’s ear, and shakes apart inside him.

“Sorry, fuck, it felt so bloody good. I just. You’re close yeah?” Eggsy asks a few moments later, rearing up onto his elbows and looking down at Harry’s erection, still hard inside Harry, but softening. Harry watches as Eggsy reaches down to grip Harry’s prick, and, _scorched_ , Harry grabs his wrist hard to stop him.

“I can’t,” he gasps, squeezing his eyes shut to block out the confused look on Eggsy's face. Wrapping his elbow over his eyes, shame scalding his skin, wicking it tight and hot to his bones, like a sunburn. “I can’t," he says into the sweat tacky crook of his arm. "I can't.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life is hard right now. The length between updates may be erratic. I am trying to get back into the rhythm, but circumstances conspire to thwart me. Thank you, as always, for reading <3 <3.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

The milk in the pan sweats against the sides, translucent and tinged a pale blue, clinging. The scent of hot metal singes the hairs in the back of Harry’s nose.

 _‘My stars shine darkly over me’_ , Harry thinks, with the full elegiac melodrama of the quote infusing him, as he stirs to prevent a greasy skin from forming across the top.

He may have lost his maxims, but Shakespeare still applies. And if one is having a proper sulk, then one must do it right.

After another moment Harry adds two heaping spoonfuls of Cadbury Drinking Chocolate and stirs, stirs, watching the cocoa swirl about until it begins to melt and diffuse. Harry breathes the steam and closes his eyes.

The scent is transportive. Back to the garret bedsit he shared with his mother just after his parent’s divorce. His bed had been tucked beneath the eaves, his mother on a couch adjacent. If Harry had nightmares she would rise and, if they were a particularly bad sort, would put the milk on the hot plate and make him a cup of drinking chocolate to soothe him back to sleep. Paired with a biscuit for dunking, she would sit beside Harry and stroke his hair until his eyes began to droop and his breathing evened out.

The smell reminds him of the black velour of midnight cloaking the mullioned windowpanes, the eerie silence of London at that time of night, and the clean scent of cold cream lingering on his mother’s cheek.

While Eggsy had been correct in assuming that Harry was high-born, with silver suppository intact, it was not so simple as all that. Harry’s father, William Hart, had been the third son of an Earl who lived in one of the family’s mouldering estates in the town of Broxbourne in Hertfordshire. He could still remember the ivy that clung to the house’s facade and the spill of emerald lawn out the back. He could remember swans on the river Lea and tennis, squash, and cricket lessons. Harry was sent to boarding school at Berkhamsted in the nearby Chiltern countryside after the divorce, with trips to visit his mum at weekend. He rarely saw his father, aside from the odd weeks spent at the estate during his summer and winter holidays. His father was a man from a different age. A man who lived off his family’s investments and doddered about in pristine tailoring even when he was mucking around with his gardening. He was wearing an ascot and a three piece suit of herringbone tweed when he died. He was a little bit silly, a little bit sweet, but mostly benignly useless in the larger scheme of things. Harry inherited a passion for Savile Row, a civilized alcoholism, complete with a tradition of three fingers of whiskey for pudding every night, and a fondness for outdated proverbs from his father. The rest, his heart, his commitment to serving his country, his belief that one’s background was not a predestination, all the important bits really, he got from his mum.       

Evelyn Hart (née Weeks) was one of eight children and hailed from the borough of Lewisham. She earned a full ride to the nursing program at Oxfordshire's John Radcliffe hospital and never went back. While completing her training, Harry’s father fell hopelessly in love with her detached, bluestocking allure one night when she gave him six stitches after a pub brawl. He never could resist someone who ignored him and showed him nothing but disdain, and who, when he brought her home, made his mother apoplectic with indignant, Tory rage. So, he sought her out until, as Harry’s mum put it, he ran her to ground by dent of bloody exhaustion. Got her up the duff within a month of their wedding. Their marriage lasted seven years, each one bitterer than the last.

Harry remembers her lips, a vivid red. Her lustrous hair, a shiny chestnut, that perfectly matched the colour of her eyes. The way she smelled of camphor and rubbing alcohol and sweat with just the barest hint of perfume honeying the hollow of her throat when Harry would hug her at the end of her day. Evelyn worked at Barts Hospital as a Senior Nurse and Ward Matron until her death, one day after Princess Diana’s, incidentally also by tragic motor accident, in 1997. The air of national mourning had been rather fitting.  

Harry had intended to study medicine like his mother and join the RAMC, but during his final year at Oxford he discovered the twin pleasures of sodomy and pot, which resulted in a less-than-stellar showing on his final exams, and meant that Harry ended up joining the Marines instead. Which, in turn, led him to a man who called himself Gawain, and ultimately, a meeting with Chester King.

And now who is he?

An orphan, a widower, a cripple, and a bloody retiree.

He had spent his life in secret service, confident in his ability and content in his purpose, and now...

He is adrift.

In love with a boy thirty years his junior and even that, the one bright spot, he can’t do right.

Nursing a state of maudlin self-pity, he pours out the chocolate and cups his hand around the mug, the porcelain flushing against his palm, the steam wetting his cheeks, as he raises it to his lips.

And right then, because everything is terrible, his hand shakes.

Trembles violently, sloshing the hot liquid over his wrist and all down the front of his pyjamas.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ,” Harry shouts, drawing back his arm and throwing the mug at the wall opposite. But because his entire arm is seized by paroxysm and in a weakened state, there’s no force behind it. So, instead of the spectacularly satisfying shattering smash he is desiring of, the mug simply sails through the air and hits the wall with a dull thud, snapping in two before it lands on the floor, otherwise intact, a puddle of chocolate seeping out around it, like a haemorrhage.

From behind him:

“Oi, Harry, what’re you doing?”

And Harry slumps, defeated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me. The malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours. Therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you._  
>  - _Twelfth Night_ , Shakespeare


	16. Chapter Sixteen

When you are young, it can be a terribly devastating realization that someone you love and admire is utterly, utterly human.

That they can be cruel and small and panicky and irrational and make rash decisions and terrible mistakes.

It happened time and again with mentors over the years. A pedestal, and then, the proverbial fall. Harry can remember how disgusted he was as a child, watching his father’s slow, pathetic descent after Harry’s mum left him. William Hart never recovered. And neither did Harry’s respect.

The problem, when one is a child, is that one is led to believe in the superiority of adults. That is why when one actually becomes an adult, it is a rude shock to learn that absolutely no one knows what the fuck they are doing.

Harry was lucky. He had privilege, he had money, he had a career.

All of which did bugger all to protect him from calamity, or, as the case may be, mortality. So when Violet fell ill, well and truly, _catastrophically_ , ill, Harry learned another lesson.

That when someone reveals their humanity to you, it is an honour, not a burden. And it is not to be met with disgust, but with love and, when possible, grace.

Eggsy, whether he knows this or not, doesn’t chide Harry for throwing a wobbly, as he so rightly deserves, but simply ushers Harry off to clean himself up, and Harry, reprieved, goes.

He showers and changes into fresh pyjamas. He shaves. Combs his hair. Possibly he sneaks a finger of whiskey on the way back into the kitchen for fortitude. Maybe he goes back for one more.

He finds Eggsy sitting on the island, staring out at the moonstruck waves. His feet are propped up on the edge of the sink opposite and he is eating a bowl of cereal that he must have brought back with him from London. The lights are off, but Harry can tell that all trace of his humiliating loss of control has been erased. The chocolate is gone from the wall and the floor and the pan sits, gleaming, in the drainboard.

Eggsy’s ankle is cool as stone when Harry wraps his hand around it. Stroking the smooth marble knobs of his bones, the crackling hairs on his shins, the rough sandpaper of his heels.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice a cracked whisper in the dark room. “Eggsy, I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve any of this.”

Eggsy cocks his head at Harry, and chews.

Maybe metaphorically, as well as physically; masticating the problem that is Harry between his molars, grinding him down to the essentials: old, convalescent, prone to tantrums and erectile dysfunction.

What a bloody catch.

Harry is expecting anything other than what Eggsy actually says. “You ain’t never faced much adversity in your life, have you, Harry?”

Eggsy's eyes are crinkled affectionately at their corners, which Harry finds strangely condescending and makes him bristle. “Tosh,” Harry retorts, automatic, rapid fire. “I came up gay in the 80’s. And, may I remind you, that my profession included having someone shooting bullets, bombs, and hand grenades at me on rather a regular basis. If that’s not adversity, then I don’t know—”

“Shut up will you?” Eggsy points his spoon at Harry and raises his eyebrows.

Harry, a bit sullenly, closes his mouth.

“What I meant was, you ain’t never been told no before, not really, not in the way chavs like me are from birth, and now, well, it’s your body saying it, innit?”

Harry opens his mouth to correct him, but finds himself at a loss for words.

“You used to be able to rely on yourself. I get it. Christ, Harry, the first time I saw you, fit as all fuck, and posh to boot, fighting those boys in the Black Prince for me, _God_ , I wanted you ta bend me over the table top and ride me ‘til I saw stars. I fucking worshipped you. Never'd seen anything like you before. Couldn’t decide if I wanted you to take me to bed or teach me everything you knew. Finally just decided I wanted both. You were in the prime of your life, Harry, and you got taken out of the game before you were ready. Harry, you ain’t broken. You’re just healing. You gotta cut yourself some slack.”

It’s far more insightful than Harry would have given him credit for, but then, that is Eggsy: a constant contradiction.

Harry nudges Eggsy’s ankle and when the boy lifts it, Harry steps up between his legs.

“How did you get so wise?” he murmurs, before leaning in.

Eggsy tastes of Coco Pops, somewhat like the chocolate comfort Harry had been seeking earlier, his mouth chilled from the milk, his tongue slightly gritty from the cereal. He wraps his legs around Harry, drawing him close.

“Dunno,” Eggsy says, between sweet, fathomless kisses. “Suppose it was seein’ me mum and Dean make nothing of their lives, yeah? When I finally met you I saw there could be a different way. That I weren’t useless.”

It seems that Eggsy didn’t have the luxury of adults in his life who, at the very least, tried to role model adulthood for him, even if they didn’t have any bloody idea what they were doing.

“I’m afraid that’s partly my fault,” Harry says remorsefully, pulling back. “Your father died saving my life. It would have been different for you, if he had lived.”

Eggsy shrugs. “Ain’t no use thinking like that. He died and because of him, I got to be a Kingsman. An’ I got you.”

Harry shakes his head.

“Eggsy, as kind as you are to say that I’m not, I am broken. My injuries, they’re not going away. There is no cure. This is it.”

“So, what? It means you can’t have a life? Harry, weren’t you the one telling me that if I could adapt and learn, I could transform? Well, what about you? Was it all just a load of shite?”

Harry stares into Eggsy’s eyes, hard and glittering in the moonlight streaming in through the window. His jaw is clenched, square and tight, his mouth turned down at the corners. Is Harry going to be yet another disappointment to this young man? Eggsy seems braced for it.

“You going to quote Hemingway back to me too?” Harry asks softly, with a small smile.

“If it’ll help. ‘ _There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self?_ ’” Eggsy beams. “Come here you poncy git and kiss me, yeah?”

So Harry does. How could he not?

Eggsy’s mouth is a wonder. Sumptuous and soft and malleable, it melts against Harry’s like wax licked by a flame. His tongue is sugared when Harry sucks on it, drawing up deep, satisfied moans from the well of Eggsy’s throat. Harry wants to get him back upstairs for a proper snog.

But just when he is about to suggest it...

“Did I hurt you earlier?” Eggsy breathes into Harry’s ear as Harry kisses at Eggsy’s throat, his jaw.

Harry jerks away, mouth dry. “Of course not.”

“I just—”

Harry shakes his head. Appalled. He cuts him off. “It felt divine, Eggsy, my boy, it was lovely. Please believe me; I just, couldn’t finish. It happens, sometimes. Not all of us can come again after only five hours.”

“But I told you I didn’t mind, Harry. I could touch you all night, fuck, I could just kiss you, and be happy. I need you to tell me if something ain’t working. I can’t read your mind.”

“I will. I promise.”

“But—”

“I thought I could,” Harry blurts out, grateful for the darkness so that Eggsy can’t see him blush. “I thought I could come, but I was wrong.” Grateful that Eggsy doesn’t push anymore, just lets it go at that. Harry gathers him back in, pushes his hot face into Eggsy’s hair, nuzzling his nose through the sticky damp strands. Eggsy is dressed in only pyjama trousers, pilfered from Harry’s closet, which are comically too big on him. His back is bare beneath Harry’s hands. He had shaved after Harry had sent him out of bed to shower earlier, and Harry breathes deep the scent of his aftershave, citrus, nutmeg, vetiver, wood.

“You know, you could be with a Swedish princess right now, instead of here with me consoling me over my underachieving cock,” Harry teases, a few moments later, wanting to lighten the mood. Eggsy hums and tightens his arms around Harry’s neck, pulling him back down to press their lips together, let their tongues meet and lick.

“Tilde can’t hold a candle to you, guv. Even if she did let me bum her.”

“Oh? She has a refractory period of more than 72 hours?”

Eggsy laughs.

“And what about hair? She has me beat there too?”

Eggsy tightens the circle of his legs around Harry, fists his hands in his pyjama top and tugs him back in. Mumbles against Harry’s lips. “No one has a finer pair of hairy bollocks than you, love. Don’t worry.”

He’s giggling by now, chuckling into the kiss, and Harry’s heart is beating quicker at the wonderful sound.

“Can we go to sleep now, please?” Eggsy whinges a few minutes later, breathless and warm and squirming in Harry’s arms.

Harry lets Eggsy curry him off to bed. Once there he wraps himself around Eggsy and whispers _thank you_ into his ear.

“Fer what?” Eggsy asks, shoving his arse back into the cup of Harry’s body and winding their hands up together to tuck them underneath his chin.

“For helping me pull my head out of my arse.”

“Oh,” Eggsy mumbles, voice thick, "Yer welcome." He's already on the verge of sleep, his body slack and heavy against Harry.

Harry lies there for some time, thinking of what Eggsy had said.

Turning it over and over in his head.

That word: _transform_.

That word: _adapt_.

  
_Maybe_ , he thinks, _my maxims aren’t entirely lost to me after all_.


	17. The End

Hey All,

I'm sad to say that something happened today that took all the joy out of writing this fic for me. I don't have plans to finish it, but will leave it up how it is. It ends on the hopeful note I would have wanted to end on eventually anyway, so just know Harry and Eggsy are happy and in <3 <3 <3.

I just wanted to thank all of you that were following along for all of your support and love. It really meant the world to me. THE WORLD. You were the best readers and the greatest cheerleaders. I appreciate you.

All my <3,

Elle

 


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